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0:00:42 Scott, why do you think young men are having less sex?
0:00:46 The most well-resourced, brightest people in the world
0:00:47 are trying to convince young men
0:00:50 they can have a reasonable facsimile of a life online.
0:00:53 You don’t need friends, go on Reddit or Discord.
0:00:56 You don’t need to go through the bullshit
0:00:57 of trying to find a job.
0:01:02 Just trade stocks and crypto on Robinhood and Coinbase.
0:01:05 And you don’t need to go through the aggravation,
0:01:08 the effort, the rejection, the humiliation sometimes.
0:01:10 The effort, learn how to be funny,
0:01:12 learn how to be smart, shower for God’s sakes,
0:01:16 work out, dress well, show up to things
0:01:19 of trying to get a romantic partner when you have a viewpoint.
0:01:22 So I think a lot of men are just opting out
0:01:23 of the dating scene.
0:01:25 In addition, there’s some societal factors.
0:01:27 Men are going more conservative.
0:01:28 Women are going more progressive,
0:01:30 which creates another reason
0:01:33 why they don’t want to date or don’t like each other.
0:01:35 I’ve said to you in my 20s and 30s,
0:01:37 for the life of me, can’t remember the political affiliation
0:01:38 of anyone I dated.
0:01:40 Now it’s just another reason why people don’t date.
0:01:43 I think online dating creates this portion of polygamy
0:01:46 where 80% of women want the same 10% of guys,
0:01:49 which kind of blocks out the bottom 90.
0:01:52 So I think there’s a lot of wins in the face
0:01:57 of a young man who is trying to find a relationship
0:02:01 that ultimately involves sex and you see it everywhere.
0:02:04 The number one out of five men you walk by
0:02:05 under the age of 30 on the street
0:02:07 hasn’t had sex in a year.
0:02:10 And people hear sex and their brain goes different places.
0:02:14 It’s a key step to forming the most important thing in life.
0:02:17 And that is a loving, secure relationship.
0:02:24 Welcome to First Time Founders.
0:02:25 I’m Ed Elson.
0:02:32 30 years ago, 152 million men worldwide
0:02:33 struggled with erectile dysfunction.
0:02:37 Today, that number has doubled
0:02:40 and it’s not just older men who are affected.
0:02:44 More than a quarter of men under the age of 40 experience ED.
0:02:48 With over a billion dollars spent each year on ED treatments,
0:02:51 many men rely on medication.
0:02:53 But after dealing with these issues firsthand,
0:02:55 my next guest was determined
0:02:58 to find a better long term solution.
0:02:59 And so together with his cousin,
0:03:02 he created an app filled with resources
0:03:05 from psychologists, neurologists and physiotherapists
0:03:09 designed to help men address their issues naturally.
0:03:10 Since launching in 2020,
0:03:14 the app has helped over 700,000 men
0:03:15 improve their sexual wellbeing
0:03:18 and has fostered a community that’s breaking the stigma
0:03:21 around discussing intimate health issues.
0:03:23 This is my conversation with Angus Barge,
0:03:26 co-founder and CEO of Mojo.
0:03:28 Angus, thank you very much for joining me.
0:03:30 Oh, thank you very much for having me.
0:03:32 So we’re going to talk about Mojo,
0:03:33 what the company is and what it does,
0:03:36 but I think the place to start
0:03:39 is how you came up with this idea
0:03:41 because I think it is really important.
0:03:45 So just quickly tell us the origin story of Mojo.
0:03:47 How did this all begin?
0:03:49 That is a question I often get
0:03:50 and people react differently
0:03:52 as I kind of stare them down the bar
0:03:54 and tell them what the business does.
0:03:58 Yeah, the business idea came from a long car journey
0:03:59 with my cousin actually.
0:04:03 I think I had one of those moments when in the car with him
0:04:05 that your mouth just starts moving,
0:04:07 your brain hasn’t really engaged with what it was saying
0:04:11 and kind of looking very far out the passenger window.
0:04:15 I basically told him that as like healthy 28 year old
0:04:16 who’d never had any issues,
0:04:19 suddenly I was struggling to get it up in bed
0:04:22 and I think kind of understandably
0:04:24 was withdrawing from dating.
0:04:26 I was single at the time, loved going out,
0:04:27 loved meeting people
0:04:29 and it felt kind of understandable
0:04:30 that I’d withdrawn from that,
0:04:35 but also noticing that I was having kind of withdrawals
0:04:36 from my social confidence as well,
0:04:40 like in big extrovert love going out, love seeing my mates
0:04:42 and found that I was almost hermiting there
0:04:43 and losing self-confidence.
0:04:47 So I think why I told him was basically for those six months
0:04:49 I’d been as close to like a mental health crisis
0:04:54 as I’d ever been for this seemingly small part of my life.
0:04:56 He paused long enough that I kind of wished the car
0:05:00 had like imploded and been swallowed up by the road.
0:05:01 And then he said, “You know what, screw it.”
0:05:04 Like I know exactly what you’re talking about.
0:05:06 He’d been struggling on and off throughout his 20s
0:05:08 with performance anxiety.
0:05:11 And I think in that moment we had a conversation
0:05:14 that not many people or not many men would have had
0:05:17 and it was like passed on the back, well done us.
0:05:20 We’ve had this kind of vulnerable conversation
0:05:22 and you start laughing about all the stupid stuff
0:05:23 you tell each other like,
0:05:24 or you tell yourself in your head,
0:05:26 like I’m never gonna get married.
0:05:28 No one’s ever gonna love me, all this kind of stuff.
0:05:30 And I think that would have been the end of it.
0:05:32 I don’t think we would have taken it any further.
0:05:35 Had that not been basically to the month
0:05:38 that we saw the kind of real power
0:05:40 of venture capital money in London.
0:05:42 I’m sure you guys had the same in New York,
0:05:45 but like every bus and every tube was covered
0:05:48 in this new message, which was sexual issues
0:05:51 aren’t just for old guys, they’re for young guys too.
0:05:52 And you should be the best partner you can be
0:05:54 and you should just take pills.
0:05:57 And it felt kind of instinctive to us
0:06:00 that we knew that medication wasn’t what we needed
0:06:02 and it wasn’t what was wrong with us.
0:06:04 It didn’t feel like it was physical.
0:06:06 So we kind of disregarded that and thought,
0:06:08 well, if that’s not the real solution,
0:06:11 if guys shouldn’t be taking medications like Vagra,
0:06:13 then what is the solution?
0:06:16 And we very quickly found out it’s a very small
0:06:19 and niche profession called sex therapy.
0:06:21 Very small and niche to the extent
0:06:24 that there’s like 400, 500 sex therapists
0:06:25 in the whole of the UK.
0:06:28 And one of them actually happened to be my mum.
0:06:28 – Oh, wow.
0:06:31 – So having had a really awkward conversation
0:06:34 with my cousin in the car that day,
0:06:36 kind of two, three weeks later when this idea
0:06:38 just kept coming back to us and kept niggling,
0:06:42 I was kind of set up for a second awkward conversation
0:06:43 with my mum.
0:06:47 But I think it shows that this is very small niche industry
0:06:50 that not many people know kind of even what it does
0:06:52 by the fact that I struggled for a year
0:06:54 and didn’t realize that it was what I needed.
0:06:56 – Yeah, I think this story is gonna resonate
0:06:57 with a lot of young men.
0:07:01 And I can actually prove this statistically
0:07:05 because the prevalence of erectile dysfunction
0:07:08 is just growing rapidly, not just in America
0:07:11 but all over the world among young men specifically.
0:07:14 And according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine,
0:07:18 26% of men under the age of 40 today
0:07:19 struggle with erectile dysfunction.
0:07:23 So that’s one in four young men.
0:07:28 So this is a massive issue that is getting worse.
0:07:32 Anecdotally, we have the evidence that you just described
0:07:34 of being in the car and then seeing all these ads
0:07:37 telling people you should take Viagra and Cialis
0:07:40 and all of these ED pills.
0:07:42 But also we’re just seeing it in the data,
0:07:43 one in four young men.
0:07:46 So, you know, you’ve been studying this for a long time.
0:07:47 Why is this happening?
0:07:52 Why are seemingly healthy young men struggling to get it up?
0:07:54 – Yeah, and I think the site you just spoke about as well
0:07:56 is kind of erectile dysfunction,
0:07:58 which is like defined in the DSM
0:08:01 or like the manual for statistics
0:08:03 as this kind of healthcare condition.
0:08:05 But kind of one step back from that,
0:08:07 like actually lots of young men
0:08:09 aren’t struggling from erectile dysfunction.
0:08:11 That’s like a convenient name
0:08:14 that makes people think they need medication to fix it.
0:08:16 What they’re quite often struggling with
0:08:19 is performance anxiety, like going through bouts
0:08:20 of not being able to get it up
0:08:22 and kind of these psychological seeds of doubt.
0:08:25 And that’s actually far more prevalent than one in four.
0:08:29 So I think the kind of first data we really see is
0:08:33 that in 1999, like three to five percent of guys
0:08:36 under the age of 40 were struggling with erection issues.
0:08:40 And then by 2011, you start to see studies coming out.
0:08:43 There’s like 30 percent of guys under the age of 30.
0:08:47 So just this huge shift in demographic who are struggling.
0:08:51 I’d put some of that down to people more openly reporting it
0:08:53 with companies like Pfizer making drugs available
0:08:56 and it becoming more understood.
0:08:57 There’ll be a little bit of a reporting,
0:09:01 but certainly just an absolute boom in the space and the issue.
0:09:03 I think lots of people have quite kind of,
0:09:06 they like to come up with simplistic views of that.
0:09:08 They look at that kind of decade
0:09:10 and quite a few people will jump to,
0:09:12 oh, well, that’s when the porn sites
0:09:15 and the streaming sites really came onto the scene.
0:09:18 And it’s quite, you know, a nefarious industry,
0:09:19 which is easy to give a kicking
0:09:21 and lots of people love to get on board with it.
0:09:24 Not ruling porn out and saying that hasn’t had an impact,
0:09:26 but there’s plenty of studies as well
0:09:30 in sexology research that says there’s kind of a correlation
0:09:32 with porn use, no causation.
0:09:35 It gives you kind of unrealistic expectations
0:09:38 of as much yourself as your partner
0:09:40 and that can really set you up for failure.
0:09:43 But this whole idea that there’s like a hijacking
0:09:47 of your dopamine system is kind of pseudoscience at best.
0:09:50 – I’m one of the people who believes that porn
0:09:52 is probably having a bad effect on young men.
0:09:56 And I’ll just, the statistics that I am aware of
0:10:00 are that 70% of American men view porn regularly
0:10:02 and 10% of them say they are addicted.
0:10:04 And that’s all men.
0:10:06 So I would assume that among young men,
0:10:08 the statistics are a lot higher.
0:10:12 You mentioned there’s correlation versus causation.
0:10:13 I’m not fully sold.
0:10:14 I kind of still believe
0:10:16 that porn must play a role in this.
0:10:16 – Absolutely.
0:10:19 And I think by saying there is correlation,
0:10:21 it’s certainly having an impact.
0:10:23 And I’m not here kind of holding a torch
0:10:25 saying the porn is good
0:10:28 and everyone should be taking part
0:10:29 and it’s gonna suit everyone.
0:10:33 But I think what you do see with porn
0:10:34 and when you actually dig down into it,
0:10:36 there’s a real shame element around sex
0:10:38 and you’re a rotic template.
0:10:40 And almost that is the sticking point,
0:10:43 which kind of anchors you into porn.
0:10:47 The term porn addiction actually isn’t widely recognized
0:10:48 in the expert field.
0:10:50 – So it isn’t porn.
0:10:51 What is it then?
0:10:53 – With kind of zooming into that decade,
0:10:55 I think one thing that people forget
0:10:56 is kind of our whole lives.
0:11:00 We’re turned upside down from 2000, 2011.
0:11:03 Everything went online the way we were communicate day.
0:11:07 We kind of suddenly became chronically online in some way.
0:11:10 And I think in that decade,
0:11:11 we saw kind of the emergence
0:11:13 of the most anxious human beings
0:11:15 ever to have walked the planet.
0:11:16 So I think it would be too much
0:11:19 to hang the blame on one sector.
0:11:23 It just seems to be a kind of direction of travel.
0:11:25 You could now say that 50% of millennials and Gen Z
0:11:28 will struggle with some form of psychosexual issue.
0:11:32 And for me, that’s really just a kind of physical manifestation
0:11:36 of there being something much more dangerous underneath that.
0:11:39 For me, I think I actually label it on kind of loneliness
0:11:41 and disconnection,
0:11:44 which is we’re the most social animals ever
0:11:45 to have walked the planet.
0:11:48 And that’s kind of why we’re here.
0:11:51 And for me, I think we’ve now gone for so long
0:11:55 where community and connections are kind of breaking down
0:11:57 in a way that now it’s got to breaking point
0:11:59 and it’s turning up in kind of,
0:12:00 like I say, these physical manifestations
0:12:04 of we can’t actually physically connect anymore.
0:12:06 So yeah, kind of if you get me excited
0:12:09 and I’m holding court and giving wax lyrical
0:12:11 about where this all really begins,
0:12:12 I think you can map it back
0:12:17 to like the agricultural revolution, bear with me,
0:12:22 which is kind of that was the first time
0:12:24 if you think we were in these nomadic tribes
0:12:27 and we were kind of the man beside you
0:12:30 was your ally in the hunt.
0:12:34 You kind of take it into the agricultural revolution
0:12:37 and suddenly the land you own becomes very important.
0:12:40 And therefore the family you have becomes very important
0:12:42 because your livelihood relies on it.
0:12:44 So you kind of have this idea of ownership
0:12:47 and this civilization brought into this kind of
0:12:48 competitive nature between people
0:12:51 where actually now I think we’re seeing repercussions
0:12:53 of that that slowly the kind of connections
0:12:55 that we were used to for millennia
0:12:59 have now broken down over ever since.
0:13:02 – In sum, we don’t know how to interact with people.
0:13:03 And I think the amount of time
0:13:05 that we’ve actually we’re spending with our friends
0:13:07 is down around 70%.
0:13:10 In the past decade, I think the most important number
0:13:12 is 12% and that’s the share of Americans
0:13:15 who say they have no close friends at all.
0:13:18 That’s up from 3% in 1990.
0:13:19 – Yeah, it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
0:13:23 – I mean, it feels as though this is all downstream
0:13:25 of the loneliness issue.
0:13:27 And I think there’s another important point
0:13:28 that you’re making there.
0:13:32 I think in the past we’ve talked about sexual dysfunction,
0:13:37 erectile dysfunction as sort of a physical problem
0:13:39 or at least some sort of vascular problem.
0:13:41 But it sounds like what you’re saying is that actually
0:13:43 this all begins in our heads.
0:13:46 – Yeah, there was a study, again,
0:13:48 we’re talking specifically about erection issues here,
0:13:50 but things like premature ejaculation
0:13:55 is another kind of very common issue that guys face.
0:13:56 But yeah, in erection issues,
0:13:59 they did a study where kind of in guys under 40
0:14:02 who are struggling for 85% of them,
0:14:03 it’s totally psychological.
0:14:06 There’s no what you call organic element to that,
0:14:09 which means that you can rule out things like
0:14:13 testosterone or cardiac problems or fitness.
0:14:15 Like it is all psychological.
0:14:17 And then when you start to understand how the drugs
0:14:21 like Cialis, Viagra, Tydenofil, Tydenofil work,
0:14:23 the only way they work for these men
0:14:25 is through a placebo effect.
0:14:26 – Oh, interesting.
0:14:27 How do we know that?
0:14:30 I assumed that Viagra and Cialis,
0:14:35 they just have a cellular effect on your penis.
0:14:36 – They do have an effect on the body,
0:14:39 but I think if I explain to you what performance anxiety
0:14:40 is, it starts to make sense,
0:14:43 which is when you’re struggling with performance anxiety
0:14:45 or psychological erection issues,
0:14:47 basically you’re in a state of fight or flight.
0:14:49 Your body is scared.
0:14:51 It’s getting ready to run away or fight.
0:14:52 In those instances,
0:14:54 your body sends all the blood it can
0:14:57 to your skeletal muscles and your brain.
0:14:59 And that means it goes away from your digestive organs
0:15:00 and your genitals,
0:15:03 ’cause those parts of your body are just not needed
0:15:05 when you’re about to fight a saber-toothed tiger.
0:15:09 And what all of these drugs, they’re called PD-5s,
0:15:10 like the umbrella term for them,
0:15:14 that all they do is two things.
0:15:16 They widen all your blood vessels.
0:15:17 So they’re a vasodilator.
0:15:20 It means you will blush, you get headaches,
0:15:21 you get all the kind of side effects
0:15:23 come from that vasodilation.
0:15:26 And the second thing they do is they block
0:15:28 what’s called a PD-5 enzyme,
0:15:31 which is naturally secreted at the end of sex
0:15:34 to allow blood out of your genitals.
0:15:36 So if you think a guy in fight or flight,
0:15:38 no blood is going to his penis,
0:15:42 whether the blood vessels there are wide or not.
0:15:43 The only reason it then works for him
0:15:45 is because you take a Viagra and you think,
0:15:47 “Oh, great, like I’m on for tonight.
0:15:49 This is going to be good.
0:15:50 I’m on my A-game here.
0:15:51 I’m relaxed.
0:15:52 I don’t go and fight or flight.”
0:15:53 And it does work.
0:15:56 And yeah, like he’ll get a great erection as well
0:15:57 if he’s a fit, healthy, young guy,
0:15:59 ’cause there’s some extra chemicals in there
0:16:01 helping him keep all the blood in there.
0:16:04 But the reaction starts through a placebo effect.
0:16:06 (upbeat music)
0:16:07 We’ll be right back.
0:16:10 (upbeat music)
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0:17:31 We’re back with first-time founders.
0:17:33 So we basically have a generation of young men
0:17:38 who, in record numbers, are getting into the bedroom,
0:17:39 taking their clothes off,
0:17:41 and then they suddenly start panicking.
0:17:45 And this is happening, it sounds like,
0:17:48 to the majority of young men in the world right now,
0:17:49 if that’s right.
0:17:50 – And I think you’re saying as well
0:17:51 that you don’t believe that porn
0:17:53 doesn’t have anything to do with it.
0:17:55 I think that’s where porn does come in,
0:17:57 like when you get in there, you take all your clothes off,
0:17:59 you don’t look like a porn star,
0:18:03 like you start feeling nervous and anxious about your body.
0:18:06 That’s where porn can be detrimental.
0:18:08 – So tell us where Mojo comes in.
0:18:10 How is Mojo, the company, your company,
0:18:11 addressing these problems?
0:18:16 – I mean, for four years we went from that conversation
0:18:18 with my mom and we had this unfair,
0:18:20 competitive advantage where we suddenly had
0:18:25 an incredible network of Europe and America’s leading experts
0:18:27 who were really keen to work on this
0:18:29 because so few companies were.
0:18:32 And for the first kind of four years,
0:18:35 we basically took what hides
0:18:38 inside sex therapy rooms and digitized it.
0:18:40 Quite unlike other forms of therapy,
0:18:42 sex therapy is built on a foundation
0:18:43 of exercise and techniques,
0:18:46 which have kind of been built up over the last 50 years.
0:18:48 So the idea for us was really simple.
0:18:50 How do we digitize them?
0:18:51 How do we make them more accessible?
0:18:52 How do we get rid of the barriers to entry?
0:18:54 How do we make them low cost
0:18:57 to be able to deliver them really scalably to everyone?
0:19:00 So yeah, we set up an app and the kind of message for us
0:19:03 was let’s treat our sexual wellbeing
0:19:06 the same way we do our mental and our physical wellbeing,
0:19:08 which is now very common that you would invest in that
0:19:10 on an ongoing basis.
0:19:13 And I mean, it works incredibly well.
0:19:15 We’re really proud of the work we’ve done.
0:19:17 We’ve got to a stage where the product is effective
0:19:21 and can really unpick some pretty complex psychosexual
0:19:22 issues that we’ll have guys who have been struggling
0:19:27 for 10, 15 years and we’re able to help them overcome that.
0:19:30 It is again, a kind of majority US company,
0:19:33 60, 70% of our user base in the US.
0:19:37 And we now have a user base of kind of 700,000 users.
0:19:41 Everything seemingly has gone great for the last four years.
0:19:44 I think where things have got really exciting for us recently
0:19:49 is whilst we found that we were able to successfully digitize
0:19:50 all of these exercise and techniques
0:19:53 and they could be as effective in person.
0:19:55 One thing that we were missing is
0:19:59 the kind of leading determiner of positive outcomes
0:20:02 in any form of therapy, not just sex therapy
0:20:05 is something that’s called the therapeutic alliance.
0:20:07 So it doesn’t matter if you go to a therapist
0:20:10 and you do kind of Freudian psychodynamic,
0:20:12 you’re lying on a couch and you’re talking about
0:20:16 your childhood or you are doing CBT
0:20:18 and it’s very much about cognitive restructuring.
0:20:21 They’re polar opposite ends of the therapeutic spectrum.
0:20:24 The leading factor that will determine whether you have
0:20:26 a successful experience is what’s called
0:20:27 the therapeutic alliance.
0:20:30 It is the relationship between you and the therapist.
0:20:32 Do you believe they have positive regard for you?
0:20:35 Do you believe that you’re kind of in the same boat,
0:20:36 working towards the same goal?
0:20:37 Are they empathetic?
0:20:39 Do you trust them?
0:20:42 And I think that was something we were never able to deliver
0:20:45 through the app in those first four years.
0:20:46 – What did the product look like?
0:20:50 Were you interacting with a therapist on the other side
0:20:54 or was it a sort of algorithm suggesting you feedback?
0:20:56 In what sense was the therapeutic alliance missing?
0:20:58 – So to make it scalable,
0:21:01 our ambition has always been to have the biggest human impact
0:21:02 we could possibly have.
0:21:04 So we wanted this to be available.
0:21:06 We’re kind of in 150 countries at the moment.
0:21:08 So that meant some restrictions,
0:21:11 which is we always built for scalability.
0:21:14 So we always did asynchronous content.
0:21:16 We did a lot of kind of video format
0:21:18 where we’d have experts coming on
0:21:20 and talking about common causes of erection issues.
0:21:23 They’d talk through some of these exercise
0:21:26 and we’d actually like throw presenters in
0:21:27 and we’d get them to go in and do the exercises
0:21:29 and we wouldn’t really prep them.
0:21:31 So they’d be asking kind of the stupid questions
0:21:33 which therapists would get asked.
0:21:35 They was really trying to be as kind of fly on the wall
0:21:36 as we possibly could be,
0:21:39 but there was never that level of personalization
0:21:41 that could have formed a therapeutic alliance.
0:21:44 We tried to lean on things like community.
0:21:46 So we have a really kind of vibrant community.
0:21:49 It’s anonymous and you’ll just see conversations in there
0:21:52 that like you wouldn’t believe anywhere else on the internet.
0:21:55 I think for three years I ran a session every week
0:21:58 which was 40, 50 users, they’d drop in,
0:21:59 we’d do kind of group sessions.
0:22:02 All of that was in trying to find this missing piece
0:22:04 of the therapeutic relationship.
0:22:06 But I don’t think we were ever successful.
0:22:10 And then I think last year when you really started to see
0:22:14 chat, GBT and Foro coming through,
0:22:19 you started to notice that I think deep human relationships
0:22:23 will be if not already are possible with AI.
0:22:24 So yeah, at the back end of last year
0:22:29 we have pivoted the company and we’re now an AI coach
0:22:31 for dating sex and relationships,
0:22:34 all in the hunt of that kind of missing piece.
0:22:37 – So it’s now an AI therapist,
0:22:42 which I think in the past year, we’ve seen a lot of this
0:22:45 or at least we saw this coming.
0:22:48 And I don’t really know how to feel about it
0:22:52 because in a sense it’s a good thing, I guess,
0:22:57 but there’s something highly dystopian and freaky to me
0:23:01 about human beings relying on an algorithm
0:23:06 to offer them respite and therapy.
0:23:08 So what would you say to someone like me
0:23:12 who generally finds this a little bit frightening?
0:23:15 – One would, I imagine some of the kickback here
0:23:16 is quite often safety.
0:23:20 As in the safety frameworks you have to put in place
0:23:22 to make sure that people who are seeking help
0:23:27 and being vulnerable are going to be safe.
0:23:29 The rigor that you can put into that now
0:23:31 is very kind of complex.
0:23:33 The way we’ve approached it is we have a team
0:23:37 of kind of six sex therapists who have been reading
0:23:41 100% of our conversations and annotating them all,
0:23:42 what’s appropriate, what’s not,
0:23:47 and using that to kind of train the main prompt.
0:23:50 As you’ll find with LLMs, like the longer a prompt is,
0:23:51 the kind of more off course it can go.
0:23:53 So the way we’ve also tried to counter that
0:23:56 is you build a safety agent in the background,
0:23:58 which has a much smaller, tighter remit.
0:24:03 And we’re finding that that is the beginning,
0:24:05 the kind of risk well handled was poor
0:24:07 and now we’re finding it to be absolutely exemplary.
0:24:10 So I’d say it’s the first thing people should worry about
0:24:13 is it is safe and can be made safe,
0:24:16 still very much with kind of human in the loop.
0:24:18 In terms of the dystopian idea,
0:24:22 I think you’ll see that there have been,
0:24:25 there are AI companies which are trying to kind of promote
0:24:27 boyfriend or girlfriend relationships
0:24:31 or kind of you can chat to Albert Einstein
0:24:33 and make him your friend.
0:24:35 That’s not what we’re trying to do,
0:24:39 which is we believe that kind of the problem
0:24:41 with society and the problem with society
0:24:43 that’s having less sex and less connection
0:24:47 is that kind of in real life meaningful connection
0:24:48 with others.
0:24:53 So for us, we feel that we are able to kind of enable
0:24:56 external relationships through the relationship
0:24:58 with your coach or your AI therapist.
0:24:59 It’s very much an enabler.
0:25:02 We’d never see it as a substitute.
0:25:05 And I guess it’s kind of like you wouldn’t go
0:25:07 and speak to your therapist at the weekend.
0:25:09 Like these relationships are very much
0:25:11 for kind of pushing you out in the world
0:25:13 and helping you perform better.
0:25:16 So we don’t imagine a dystopian world
0:25:20 where people are foregoing in real life relationships
0:25:21 for what’s in their phone.
0:25:24 – Do you think it’s possible that AI could be better
0:25:26 at providing therapy than a human?
0:25:29 Or is this more about cost and scalability?
0:25:30 – Yeah, it’s a good question.
0:25:33 I mean, I can speak from my experience
0:25:35 of the last couple of months and watching the team
0:25:36 build this product.
0:25:40 As I said, for safety, we had kind of six therapists
0:25:43 in reading all the conversations and kind of training the bot.
0:25:47 And in the very first meeting we had with all of them,
0:25:49 one of them said, “Don’t worry, ladies.
0:25:50 “I think all our jobs are going to be safe.”
0:25:53 Like she was laughing at this thing.
0:25:56 Two weeks later, the very same therapist came back
0:25:59 and was like, “This product is now handling conversations,
0:26:02 “backing off, leaning in better than the average therapist.”
0:26:04 – Wow, it’s incredible.
0:26:05 I think the technology is there
0:26:06 and the way we’ve been able to train it
0:26:09 is already there to kind of handle singular conversations.
0:26:11 That, for me, isn’t the therapeutic relationship.
0:26:13 It’s the beginnings of it.
0:26:16 And now just having a team that is like absolutely obsessed
0:26:18 with the idea of going really deep
0:26:22 and crazy relationship over a multi-day, week, month period
0:26:25 is the real key that we have to crack is not an easy one,
0:26:28 but I for one, definitely believe it’s possible.
0:26:31 – So what are some of the most common issues
0:26:34 that your users are reporting in the bedroom?
0:26:35 – For us, the vast majority of our users
0:26:39 are erection issues and performance anxiety.
0:26:43 You can kind of get down into the different users
0:26:46 will experience it in different ways at different times.
0:26:48 Kind of when you’re losing it,
0:26:50 we’ll tell you kind of different exercises and techniques
0:26:52 that someone would give you.
0:26:54 What we’ve looked at with the,
0:26:57 we’re starting to work with AI and LLMs as well as,
0:27:01 what’s exciting for me is it feels like you have 24/7
0:27:03 user feedback on,
0:27:05 which is they are speaking to you the whole time.
0:27:10 And we’ve kind of created this content beast,
0:27:13 which is we know exactly what the users are experiencing,
0:27:15 what problems they want to solve.
0:27:17 So it has meant that we’ve had to expand very quickly
0:27:20 in the kind of user’s job to be done that we’re covering.
0:27:24 And I think that goes into dating and relationships.
0:27:27 It was kind of too simplistic to think of it as,
0:27:31 well, I just can’t get it up or I’m coming too quickly.
0:27:32 When you start to get into the nuance,
0:27:34 it might be that you have a young guy
0:27:37 who feels like he’s dependent on porn
0:27:39 or a guy in their twenties has just suffered
0:27:42 with a big breakup and he’s lacking confidence
0:27:45 and doesn’t know how to get back into the bedroom
0:27:46 or a really common one as well
0:27:48 as couples will start to try for a baby
0:27:50 and suddenly sex completely changes.
0:27:52 It’s no longer about fun and connection.
0:27:55 It’s suddenly a job to perform
0:27:57 and it has to be an exact time
0:27:59 and it can be very like green light, go, go, go.
0:28:01 And that’s a real pressure situation.
0:28:04 So like kind of dealing with that.
0:28:06 How has that changed our relationship?
0:28:08 So yeah, it can get a lot more nuanced now,
0:28:09 which I’m really excited about.
0:28:13 – What’s sort of the most common type of person
0:28:16 that is using your app and that is struggling right now?
0:28:18 – Listen, we’re a young audience.
0:28:19 I think if you look at the average age
0:28:23 of those really big kind of pharmacy online young brands,
0:28:26 their average age tends to be kind of late 40s, early 50s,
0:28:28 even though they feel very young.
0:28:31 For us, most of our users are under the age of 30.
0:28:33 We did a piece of research and we have this saying
0:28:37 in the company, which is that men need to change to change.
0:28:39 Like we think we’re dealing with a very high
0:28:41 and 10 user base, but it’s always
0:28:43 because something in their life has changed.
0:28:46 It’s usually that they’re kind of back on the dating scene
0:28:49 and they found someone they’re really excited by,
0:28:51 but they’re suddenly struggling in the bedroom
0:28:53 and it feels really catastrophic.
0:28:55 It’s like, I need to fix this problem.
0:28:57 Otherwise, I’m going to lose this person.
0:28:59 We’ll be right back.
0:29:14 Support for the show comes from Intuit QuickBooks.
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0:30:24 What about women’s role in all of this?
0:30:27 I mean, this is specifically designed for men.
0:30:30 Do you ever get any feedback from women?
0:30:31 Do you ever hear stories from women
0:30:34 about how this issue of erectile dysfunction
0:30:37 and just sexual dysfunction is affecting their lives?
0:30:40 Yeah, I mean, it’s quite common for us to have users
0:30:43 who’ve either been sent by their female partners
0:30:47 or have kind of come to the platform,
0:30:50 started using it for a week, and then have disappeared.
0:30:52 And we’ve spoken to them when they’ve come back
0:30:54 and said kind of what happened.
0:30:56 And it’s quite often, well, actually,
0:30:58 I felt like I needed to speak to my partner
0:31:01 and kind of get her consent and get her on board with this.
0:31:03 The thing which gets me excited generally
0:31:06 is all the solutions that have come before us
0:31:08 have been very single-player
0:31:10 when this is a very relational problem.
0:31:13 And it can be a very multiplayer game.
0:31:17 And I think it’s been awful for both sides of the equation,
0:31:20 actually the experience of women being with a guy
0:31:24 who has erection issues and he feels very ashamed of it,
0:31:26 quite often given the cold shoulder,
0:31:29 they don’t know how to help.
0:31:34 Like, you can’t go and buy him kind of medication
0:31:37 or like send him off to therapy.
0:31:40 That feels very kind of putting the onus on the guy.
0:31:43 So I think coming up with these multiplayer solutions
0:31:46 is something that’s really exciting for this space
0:31:48 and can improve the experience
0:31:50 of both people in the relationship.
0:31:55 – This is one of those things that I just find so fascinating
0:31:57 because we very rarely talk about it
0:31:59 or at least not in depth.
0:32:01 And I gave you those statistics
0:32:03 on how many men this is affecting,
0:32:05 but then think of all the women that this is affecting too.
0:32:10 I mean, for every man, you know, you need a partner
0:32:14 and this is affecting them too, which is just incredible to me.
0:32:17 You mentioned that these medications,
0:32:20 you know, they’re sort of these easy fixes,
0:32:25 but they don’t get down to the root cause of the issue.
0:32:30 What does getting down to the root cause actually look like?
0:32:32 Like if you’re making a pitch
0:32:35 to someone who’s struggling with this
0:32:37 and they’re given the option, okay, you can go with Mojo
0:32:38 or you can go with this pill
0:32:41 that’s kind of just gonna fix it like that.
0:32:43 Why is it that Mojo is more compelling
0:32:46 or healthier over the long-term for that person?
0:32:49 – I mean, the medications work really well.
0:32:52 Where they stop working is
0:32:54 when you don’t feel that confident that one time,
0:32:56 you’ve taken the Viagra,
0:32:57 you don’t feel that confident for some reason,
0:32:58 something’s throwing you off.
0:33:02 And if it doesn’t quite work the way you think,
0:33:03 you’ve lost it, you’ve lost your magic pill,
0:33:05 like you’ll actually see that it’s working every time
0:33:07 and then it starts to deteriorate over time.
0:33:11 So it’s unlikely for it to work for you on an ongoing basis.
0:33:13 The thing for the sound of kind of like
0:33:16 really getting down and deep to the root cause
0:33:18 makes it sound like it’s really hard to access
0:33:19 and maybe make it sound like I’m doing
0:33:21 something incredibly complicated.
0:33:25 A lot of it is kind of within mental wellbeing,
0:33:27 your kind of mind-body connection.
0:33:29 You’re really starting to see things like mindfulness
0:33:32 of becoming a cornerstone in therapy.
0:33:35 I think I can speak definitely from personal experience.
0:33:38 I run around my week working kind of crazy hours
0:33:41 and just feel it will feel like my body is buzzing.
0:33:43 If I actually stop and think about it,
0:33:46 like my hands are buzzing, like I’m absolutely jacked
0:33:47 and I just haven’t been in my body
0:33:50 probably for the previous few days.
0:33:54 I think actually what committing to Mojo looks like
0:33:57 is quite a lot of kind of just like self-expiration,
0:34:00 really linking up that kind of mind-body experience
0:34:04 and you’ll see practices in there like meditation,
0:34:06 breath work, all of these kind of things
0:34:10 that really get you to think about what’s going on for you.
0:34:13 I mean, I find this so interesting
0:34:15 because it’s basically a reflection
0:34:20 of the holistic nature of sex and sexual health
0:34:24 that basically what you’re describing
0:34:27 is that your ability to perform in the bedroom
0:34:29 and your ability to have sex
0:34:32 is a function of everything going on in your life.
0:34:34 It’s not just some vascular issue
0:34:35 that’s happening in your penis.
0:34:38 It has to do with how you’re feeling in your head,
0:34:40 your relationship with your partner,
0:34:43 possibly other things, how things are going on,
0:34:45 how things are going at work, maybe how you’re eating.
0:34:48 I mean, it has to do with literally everything
0:34:50 and the reason that I bring that up
0:34:55 is because this is why I find the level of sexlessness
0:34:59 in our society so sad and I’ll just bring it up
0:35:01 but I’m sure most of our listeners know this already
0:35:06 but the share of men younger than 30
0:35:09 who have not had sex in the past year
0:35:13 has tripled in the past decade or so to 28%.
0:35:16 So that means one in three young men today,
0:35:20 they have not had sex in the past year.
0:35:23 And to me, that is a reflection,
0:35:27 not just that we’re not having sex
0:35:31 but we are just deeply unhealthy and sick as a society
0:35:34 because as you mentioned, this all comes from the brain.
0:35:36 It almost all comes from the soul too.
0:35:40 It’s a total reflection of your entire health.
0:35:42 So just talk about sexlessness
0:35:46 and how that’s perhaps maybe you agree with me
0:35:48 that that’s possibly the worst thing
0:35:50 that we’re seeing in our society today.
0:35:53 – I think you’re totally right and I do agree.
0:35:57 I think it’s very convenient for me or us
0:36:00 to be able to talk about physical wellbeing
0:36:02 and mental wellbeing and now I’m here saying,
0:36:04 you know, you’ve got to think about your sexual wellbeing
0:36:06 kind of trying to compartmentalize them
0:36:08 when the truth is exactly as you say,
0:36:11 it’s totally intertwined.
0:36:16 And I think we live for millennia in very close knit tribes.
0:36:23 I kind of, I think the Robert Dunbar theory
0:36:25 of kind of you had 150 people in your world
0:36:27 that you knew well,
0:36:30 but that seems like a much happier time.
0:36:33 And I guess if we’re starting to wonder kind of
0:36:35 what is the meaning of life
0:36:36 and going off and all of that kind of stuff,
0:36:40 I think someone could argue that sex and connection
0:36:41 in our relationships are the meaning of life.
0:36:45 So the fact that they’re in such disarray is very sad.
0:36:48 – So just as we wrap up here,
0:36:51 imagine we do nothing about this,
0:36:56 this issue of sexesness, loneliness, sexual dysfunction.
0:37:01 Imagine mojo fails, imagine no one invests in you.
0:37:02 We don’t bring attention to the issue.
0:37:05 In some, we just let these trends continue.
0:37:10 If that happens, where do you think humanity is headed?
0:37:14 What will society look like if we do nothing about this?
0:37:17 – I think you can kind of see the beginnings of it already,
0:37:21 which is we become very isolated.
0:37:26 I think I saw some stats, I think about Germany,
0:37:29 and it was showing that for the first time in history,
0:37:33 gender is not voting in lockstep,
0:37:36 as in their political views are not moving together.
0:37:40 Beforehand, socioeconomic, ethnicity,
0:37:42 all of those kinds of things, they move in lockstep
0:37:43 and gender was one of them.
0:37:45 Like your political view would move in lockstep.
0:37:48 And I think what you’ve seen is that’s really separated now
0:37:51 and men and women are not connecting
0:37:52 and thinking the same way
0:37:55 and it’s becoming very kind of hostile
0:37:58 and isolated and scary
0:38:02 and the world just becomes a much meaner place.
0:38:04 – We have a lot of young men who listen to this podcast.
0:38:06 What would be your number one piece of advice
0:38:09 for a young man who is struggling with sex,
0:38:11 maybe struggling with dating,
0:38:14 or just struggling with relationships in general?
0:38:16 – The number one piece of advice
0:38:18 would just be to speak to a mate.
0:38:20 I mean, that’s kind of what happened
0:38:22 for me with my cousin Zander.
0:38:26 It doesn’t have to take you down a road
0:38:28 of changing your career.
0:38:30 But I think if I could wave a magic wand
0:38:33 and tell everyone who was struggling
0:38:35 with some kind of sexual issue to go out
0:38:37 and speak to their three closest friends,
0:38:39 I wouldn’t really have a business to run, to be honest.
0:38:43 Like your friends, if they treat you with kind of
0:38:45 the empathy that you deserve, then being your friends,
0:38:47 actually a lot of the shame
0:38:50 that kind of anchors these issues would be totally gone.
0:38:54 So I’m not underestimating how hard that is to do,
0:38:57 but I would advise that person speaks
0:38:58 to a very close friend.
0:38:59 – Speak to a friend.
0:39:00 Thank you.
0:39:04 Angus Bodge is the co-founder and CEO of Mojo.
0:39:05 Angus, this was great.
0:39:06 Thank you very much for joining me.
0:39:07 – Yeah, thanks so much, Ed.
0:39:08 That was really fun.
0:39:13 – Our producer is Claire Miller.
0:39:15 Our associate producer is Alison Weiss,
0:39:18 and our engineer is Benjamin Spencer.
0:39:20 Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.
0:39:22 Thank you for listening to First Time Founders
0:39:24 from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:39:26 Tune in tomorrow for ProfG Markets.
0:39:30 (upbeat music)
0:39:30 .
0:40:01 Support for the show comes from Intuit QuickBooks.
0:40:04 If you think your business is ready to thrive,
0:40:06 then it might be time to check out QuickBooks.
0:40:09 QuickBooks can take things like unpaid invoices
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0:40:13 so you can take things to the next level.
0:40:16 Intuit QuickBooks is an all-in-one business platform
0:40:18 that can help with those day-to-day tasks
0:40:20 like invoicing expenses and taxes.
0:40:22 Now you can manage and grow your business
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0:40:26 to sit back and enjoy it.
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0:40:34 Licensed as a money transmitter
0:40:36 by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
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0:00:02 – Okay, business leaders, are you here to play
0:00:04 or are you playing to win?
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0:00:56 – On Explain It To Me, we treat every single question
0:00:59 you ask us with the utmost professionalism.
0:01:02 What was your initial reaction when you read that question?
0:01:06 – Honestly, like my gut initial reaction was like, oh, honey.
0:01:08 Like, yeah, I’m kind of like, okay, all right.
0:01:10 I’m glad you said that.
0:01:11 – There are no bad questions,
0:01:15 but there are some that are really hard to answer.
0:01:16 This week on Explain It To Me,
0:01:19 Segal Samuel tells us why those are the ones
0:01:20 she gravitates towards.
0:01:24 New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:33 – I’m Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice.
0:01:37 America has been described as an attention economy.
0:01:39 That’s incorrect.
0:01:40 We’re an addiction economy.
0:01:45 Addiction economy, as read by George Hahn.
0:01:53 – It’s the final day of dry January.
0:01:55 I tried it, didn’t last.
0:01:59 I’m now drinking again like a Pan Am pilot in the ’70s.
0:02:03 Anyway, the 22% of US adults who abstained
0:02:06 from alcohol this month will get a personality upgrade
0:02:08 just in time for the Super Bowl.
0:02:11 Ostensibly, the Super Bowl is a contest
0:02:12 between the two best football teams,
0:02:16 but really, it’s a platform for the real economy.
0:02:18 The addiction economy.
0:02:21 As Matthew McConaughey says in the latest ad
0:02:23 from Uber Eats, quote,
0:02:25 the whole game is basically an elaborate scheme
0:02:29 to make you buy more food, unquote.
0:02:32 Super Bowl ads are a proxy for the addiction economy
0:02:35 as advertisers for the food industrial complex,
0:02:39 beer and alcohol brands, online gambling, crypto,
0:02:44 and social media platforms offer you dopa on demand.
0:02:47 But there’s a downside to gorging, no?
0:02:49 Not to worry, there will also be ads
0:02:52 from the medical pharma industrial complex
0:02:55 for products that manage some of the damage.
0:02:59 Pundits claim we live in an attention economy.
0:03:00 We don’t.
0:03:04 Attention is just a metric for addiction.
0:03:08 The addiction economy is broader, encompassing media,
0:03:13 technology, alcohol, tobacco, gaming, pharma, and healthcare.
0:03:17 The world’s most valuable resource
0:03:22 isn’t data, compute, oil, or rare earth metals.
0:03:26 It’s dopa, i.e. the fuel of the addiction economy,
0:03:30 which runs the most valuable companies in history.
0:03:34 Addiction has always been a component of capitalism.
0:03:36 Nothing rivals the power of craving
0:03:40 to manufacture demand and support irrational margins.
0:03:43 Sugar and rum were the dopa delivery systems
0:03:46 and currency of the triangle trade.
0:03:47 Later, the British East India Company
0:03:51 was the Sinaloa cartel of the 19th century,
0:03:55 producing and distributing a product China became addicted to,
0:03:56 opium.
0:03:59 At its peak in the last century,
0:04:02 big tobacco acquired customers with TV ads
0:04:04 and endorsements from doctors.
0:04:07 But the addictive ingredient, nicotine,
0:04:12 is how the industry extracts $86,000 to $195,000 per customer.
0:04:17 And costs those customers $1 million to $2 million
0:04:21 in expenditures, opportunity costs, and healthcare expenses.
0:04:24 Historically, the most valuable companies
0:04:27 turned dopa into consumption.
0:04:31 Over the last 100 years, 15 of the top 30 companies
0:04:33 by cumulative compound return
0:04:37 have been pillars of the addiction economy.
0:04:40 The compounders cluster in tobacco,
0:04:45 Altria, plus 265,528,900%.
0:04:48 The food industrial complex,
0:04:53 Coca-Cola, plus 12,372,265%.
0:05:00 Pharma, Wyeth, plus 5,702,341%.
0:05:07 And retailers, Kroger, plus 2,834,362%.
0:05:13 That sell both substances and treatments.
0:05:16 To predict which companies will be the top compounders
0:05:19 over the next century, consider this.
0:05:22 Eight of the world’s 10 most valuable businesses
0:05:25 turned dopa into attention.
0:05:29 Or make picks and shovels for these dopa merchants.
0:05:33 Given a choice, most lab rats will pick sugar
0:05:36 over cocaine, they’ll even self-administer
0:05:39 electric shocks for a sweet boost.
0:05:42 Sugar stimulates our reward system
0:05:44 20 times faster than cigarettes.
0:05:48 Food companies engineer processed foods,
0:05:50 not to maximize nutrition,
0:05:53 but to hit the so-called bliss point.
0:05:57 The exact combination of saltiness, sweetness,
0:06:01 and other tastes that make their product delicious.
0:06:03 But not so delicious that consumers feel sated
0:06:05 after a small serving.
0:06:10 In other words, their food is engineered for more,
0:06:11 not nutrition.
0:06:19 The industry profits at the expense of its customers’ health.
0:06:23 According to a 2022 meta-analysis,
0:06:27 20% of American adults are addicted to food.
0:06:32 Consumption of processed foods raises your mortality rate
0:06:35 by 25%.
0:06:38 The U.S. has a diabetes epidemic
0:06:42 and an adult obesity rate of 40%.
0:06:45 Compounding this public health crisis?
0:06:49 Food companies have a history of purchasing their competitors.
0:06:51 Diet companies.
0:06:56 In 1978, Heinz bought Weight Watchers for 72 months.
0:06:59 Bought Weight Watchers for $72 million.
0:07:04 Unilever paid $2.3 billion for Slim Fast in 2000.
0:07:10 Nestle purchased Jenny Craig in 2006 for $600 million.
0:07:14 In 2010, the private equity firm
0:07:17 that owns Cinnabon and Carvel Ice Cream
0:07:19 purchased Atkins Nutritionals.
0:07:23 Most of these diet brands were later sold.
0:07:26 These acquisitions are akin to Pablo Escobar
0:07:28 buying the Betty Ford Center.
0:07:33 McDonald’s used to brag, one billion served.
0:07:37 Considering the history of weight loss and diabetes drugs,
0:07:42 desoxy-fedrein, fen-fen, metformin, et cetera,
0:07:45 pharma might just as easily brag, billions prescribed.
0:07:50 After the food industrial complex makes people sick,
0:07:53 we hand them over to the healthcare industrial complex
0:07:57 to treat the chronic conditions of these lifelong customers.
0:08:03 GLP-1 drugs are the most effective weight loss drugs to date
0:08:05 as they make us feel fuller for longer
0:08:09 and suppress hunger cravings by modulating dopa levels.
0:08:15 About 12% of U.S. adults have now taken a GLP-1
0:08:20 and the average GLP-1 user spends 11% less
0:08:23 on food and beverages.
0:08:25 But it’s early days for GLP-1s.
0:08:29 Cost remains a barrier and only one-third
0:08:32 of employer healthcare plans covered GLP-1s
0:08:35 for non-diabetic patients looking to lose weight.
0:08:39 Anecdotally, a Bloomberg Business Week profile
0:08:40 of Bowling Green, Kentucky,
0:08:44 where 4% of the residents take GLP-1s,
0:08:47 tells us that restaurants, grocery stores,
0:08:51 healthcare providers, gyms, and clothing retailers
0:08:54 are all feeling the GLP-1 impact.
0:09:00 If 60 million of the roughly 100 million U.S. adults
0:09:03 who are obese took the drugs,
0:09:08 Goldman Sachs estimates GDP could grow by more than 1%.
0:09:13 As their full impact and second order effects play out,
0:09:16 GLP-1s will likely transform the economy.
0:09:24 Some people, smokers, use to reach for a cigarette
0:09:26 immediately after finishing a meal.
0:09:29 In the movies, they’d reach for a cigarette after sex.
0:09:32 Today, most restaurants are smoke-free,
0:09:35 but phones are ubiquitous before, during,
0:09:37 and after every meal.
0:09:41 We used to pick up a landline, Google it,
0:09:44 to reach out and touch someone.
0:09:46 Now that everyone has a cell phone,
0:09:50 we spend 70% less time with our friends
0:09:52 than we did a decade ago.
0:09:56 We’re addicted to our phones,
0:09:58 and even when we’re not seeking our fix,
0:10:01 our phones are seeking us out,
0:10:06 notifying us on average 46 times per day for adults
0:10:11 and 237 times per day for teens.
0:10:15 In college, I spent too much time smoking pot
0:10:17 and watching Planet of the Apes,
0:10:20 but when I decided to venture on campus,
0:10:23 my bong and Cornelius didn’t send me notifications.
0:10:29 The compounders here are in your pocket.
0:10:31 Sales of iPhones have made up roughly half
0:10:35 of Apple’s revenue since 2009.
0:10:38 Of late, the company has rolled out screen time tracking
0:10:41 and other anti-addiction tools.
0:10:43 Apple’s brand positioning is a bartender
0:10:45 opening an AA chapter.
0:10:49 Alphabet is incentivized to maximize screen time
0:10:53 as 76% of its revenue comes from targeting eyeballs
0:10:54 with advertising.
0:10:58 Alphabet is a niche player in the device market,
0:11:02 but its Android OS, 73% market share,
0:11:07 is the perfect gateway drug as it’s open source and free.
0:11:12 It took us 20 years to wake up to the danger of opiates
0:11:17 and about the same time for the phone, but it is happening.
0:11:21 18 states have passed laws restricting the use of phones
0:11:24 in school and roughly three quarters of schools
0:11:28 have policies restricting their use in the classroom.
0:11:31 Yonder, a firm that makes locking pouches for phones,
0:11:35 has increased sales to schools by 10X
0:11:38 since 2021 to $2.1 million.
0:11:42 When Mark Zuckerberg released a video
0:11:45 announcing the end of Facebook’s fact-checking program,
0:11:47 Jimmy Kimmel joked that Zuck was dressed
0:11:50 like a Molly dealer from Chechnya.
0:11:54 Somehow, all the other billionaire tech boys are jealous,
0:11:57 including the CEO of Metta, Mark Zuckerberg,
0:11:58 who’s been kissing Trump’s ass
0:12:00 like it’s the Blarney Stone lately.
0:12:04 Mark Zuckerberg showed up to debase himself at Mar-a-Lago
0:12:06 shortly after the election.
0:12:10 Today, he released a suspiciously Trump-friendly announcement.
0:12:12 The shoe fits.
0:12:14 The difference?
0:12:16 MDMA makes you euphoric,
0:12:19 while social media makes you anxious and depressed.
0:12:23 As my NYU colleague, Jonathan Hyde, put it,
0:12:26 the unconstrained combination of phones
0:12:28 and social media has been, quote,
0:12:31 “The largest uncontrolled experiment
0:12:36 “humanity has ever performed on its own children,” unquote.
0:12:41 So far, the results are a mental health crisis.
0:12:45 8% of teens are addicted to alcohol or drugs.
0:12:49 24% are addicted to social media.
0:12:52 Unlike other platforms,
0:12:57 TikTok is built around affinities, not the social graph.
0:13:01 If chasing likes from our friends is digital heroin,
0:13:03 TikTok’s AI is fentanyl.
0:13:06 The algorithm rapidly calibrates
0:13:08 what triggers a user’s DOPA response
0:13:11 by feeding them hundreds of videos every hour,
0:13:14 turning the user into a blissed-out zombie.
0:13:18 According to a lawsuit filed by the Kentucky Attorney General,
0:13:23 users can become addicted to TikTok within 35 minutes.
0:13:28 The same lawsuit cited TikTok’s own research,
0:13:33 which stated that, quote, “Compulsive usage interferes
0:13:35 “with essential personal responsibilities,
0:13:39 “including sufficient sleep, work in school,
0:13:43 “and connecting with loved ones,” unquote.
0:13:47 We’re hardwired for addiction.
0:13:49 We’re also wired for conflict,
0:13:51 as competing for scarce resources
0:13:55 has shaped our neurological system to swiftly detect,
0:13:58 assess, and respond to threats,
0:13:59 even before we’re aware of them.
0:14:02 As technology advances,
0:14:06 our wiring makes us more powerful and more vulnerable.
0:14:10 We produce DOPA monsters at internet speed.
0:14:13 We can wage war at a velocity and scale
0:14:16 that risks extinction in the blink of an eye.
0:14:21 Human beings evolved in small, cooperative groups
0:14:24 where loyalty meant survival.
0:14:28 This instinct makes us naturally favor in-groups,
0:14:31 our people, our nation, our ethnicity,
0:14:36 and distrust out-groups, foreigners, outsiders, the other.
0:14:40 Genocide exploits this instinct
0:14:44 by amplifying group identity and dehumanizing outsiders,
0:14:48 making mass killing seem justified or even necessary.
0:14:53 Violence repeated becomes routine.
0:14:57 What was unthinkable on Monday
0:14:59 becomes standard procedure by Friday.
0:15:04 Removing the security details of our political adversaries
0:15:07 who are under real threat from foreign enemies
0:15:11 is simply repackaged violence.
0:15:14 In sum, it’s Tuesday in America.
0:15:19 This week marked the 80th anniversary
0:15:22 of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army.
0:15:26 Our proudest moment, in my view,
0:15:30 was America’s role in arresting this genocide,
0:15:33 which represents the very worst perversion
0:15:35 of human instincts.
0:15:40 Now the U.S. risks becoming the font of this abomination.
0:15:44 The president has repeatedly said that, quote,
0:15:49 “immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country,” unquote.
0:15:53 The world’s richest man is making Nazi gestures
0:15:55 and told a far-right group in Germany, quote,
0:15:59 “It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values,
0:16:02 “and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism
0:16:05 “that dilutes everything,” unquote.
0:16:10 Our worst instincts remain static.
0:16:14 It’s our technology that’s evolving.
0:16:19 Instinct morphing into fear and demonization
0:16:23 coupled with propaganda, rail transport, and Zyklon B
0:16:26 gave rise to the largest murder site in history.
0:16:31 What might happen if these same instincts take root
0:16:34 in a nation with unprecedented industrial might
0:16:37 armed with social media and AI?
0:16:40 We need to cauterize this hate.
0:16:43 People in bots in the comments section
0:16:46 will accuse me of TDS.
0:16:48 Have at it.
0:16:53 The road to fascism is littered with accusations
0:16:55 of overreacting.
0:16:59 So color me overreacting.
0:17:04 It’s both the correct response and impossible to overreact.
0:17:08 Never forget.
0:17:13 – Life is so rich.
0:17:17 (gentle music)
0:17:19 (gentle music)
0:17:22 (gentle music)
0:17:24 you

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0:00:41 (upbeat music)
0:00:44 – Nice.
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0:01:18 – Hey, what you doing?
0:01:21 – Programming our thermostat to 17 degrees
0:01:23 when we’re out at work or asleep.
0:01:25 We’re taking control of our energy use this winter
0:01:28 with some easy energy saving tips I got from Fortis BC.
0:01:31 – Ooh, conserve energy and save money?
0:01:33 Maybe to buy those matching winter jackets?
0:01:34 – Uh, no.
0:01:36 We’re also getting that whole matching outfit thing
0:01:37 under control.
0:01:40 – Discover low and no cost energy saving tips
0:01:43 at fortisbc.com/energysavingtips.
0:01:45 – Matching track suits?
0:01:46 – Please know.
0:01:50 – Episode 334, 334 is the area code
0:01:52 covering Southeast in Alabama in 1934.
0:01:55 Alcatraz opened as a federal prison.
0:01:57 True story, I have a friend who has sex
0:01:59 three to four times a week, works out every day
0:02:03 and reads at least two books a week.
0:02:05 And all this guy ever does is bitch about prison.
0:02:09 – Go, go, go!
0:02:12 (upbeat music)
0:02:21 – Welcome to the 334th episode of “The Prodigy Pod.”
0:02:22 What’s happening?
0:02:26 The dog is back in the incredible city of London.
0:02:29 That’s right, where the sun has decided to go on vacation.
0:02:31 The sun has decided to take a fall, winter,
0:02:33 and I would imagine spring off.
0:02:35 I did have a wonderful weekend.
0:02:37 Let’s bring this back to me.
0:02:39 What are the wonderful things about London?
0:02:41 One, it’s a great city.
0:02:44 Two, Premier League football, maybe that’s number one.
0:02:47 Three, probably first and foremost,
0:02:48 that’s actually a broad one,
0:02:50 is proximity to the continent.
0:02:52 So what did I do with my 14-year-old this weekend?
0:02:55 We went to Pancras, St. Pancras train station,
0:02:57 which is literally 10 minutes from my house.
0:03:00 Got on the Eurostar, which is lovely, which is lovely.
0:03:04 And I mean, zoomed at like 330 kilometers per hour.
0:03:06 I love public infrastructure.
0:03:08 I say raise taxes and just build shit
0:03:09 that the public can use.
0:03:13 Gerdynord, two hours and 21 minutes later,
0:03:16 and then boom, in our hotel, we went to the Notre Dame.
0:03:21 Jesus Christ, I believe that God hangs out there now.
0:03:23 Oh my God, oh my God,
0:03:27 we’re sitting in line for 70 minutes
0:03:29 with every tourist from everywhere, including myself.
0:03:32 Wow, wow, no truck to the Dom.
0:03:36 Jesus Christ, seriously, but more importantly,
0:03:39 stayed at a beautiful hotel, went to the pool with my son,
0:03:41 because when you have a son, you always gotta go to the pool.
0:03:43 You always gotta go to the pool, full stop.
0:03:44 Gotta check out the pool.
0:03:46 That’s how we evaluate hotels is by the pool.
0:03:48 Then we went upstairs to this fancy Tony restaurant
0:03:52 and had light apps, which was delightful.
0:03:53 And then the highlight of the trip,
0:03:58 we went to the PSG game, 20 minutes to the stadium, boom.
0:03:59 Harking wasn’t that bad.
0:04:01 Into the stadium, amazing fans.
0:04:04 We saw them, Ty Renz, great game, fantastic fans.
0:04:07 It was raining, but the stadium is designed really well,
0:04:08 so we didn’t get rained on.
0:04:12 And then boom, back to the hotel in just like 22 minutes.
0:04:15 What a wonderful, wonderful city.
0:04:18 Anyways, that’s what I’m doing.
0:04:20 Today, we speak with Sahil Bloom,
0:04:22 an investor, entrepreneur, and writer
0:04:25 known for his newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle.
0:04:27 That’s kind of an interesting name, The Curiosity Chronicle.
0:04:29 That sounds like it’s being on PBS.
0:04:31 We discussed with Sahil his latest book,
0:04:32 “The Five Types of Wealth,
0:04:35 “A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.”
0:04:39 Okay, moving on to a shakeup in the AI world.
0:04:41 Oh my God, what are we gonna talk about?
0:04:44 This is kind of the business story of the week.
0:04:47 DeepSeq, a Chinese startup that’s just over a year old,
0:04:49 sent shockwaves to the global tech markets
0:04:52 in an AI model that’s as powerful
0:04:55 as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini,
0:04:57 but it was built with just a fraction
0:04:59 of the usual resources.
0:05:03 DeepSeq R1 was trained using just 2,000 NVIDIA chips
0:05:05 and 6 million in computing power.
0:05:07 That’s about 10 times less
0:05:10 than what Meta spent on building its latest AI technology.
0:05:12 Why does this matter?
0:05:14 This signals a major shift,
0:05:16 maybe even a paradigm shift in AI development.
0:05:21 Less money and fewer chips equals more players, right?
0:05:23 The market essentially has been rewarding
0:05:26 investment over innovation.
0:05:28 And the small number of players have been running away
0:05:30 with it, specifically the ones that have the capital
0:05:33 to deploy basically the defense budget of China,
0:05:35 which is the capital on their balance sheets
0:05:36 and how much they are spending
0:05:41 on developing these data centers, buying NVIDIA GPUs.
0:05:43 I mean, just this staggering investment here
0:05:46 and then all of a sudden comes this innovation
0:05:47 where the chips are speaking to each other
0:05:51 in a more efficient way, as opposed to traditional models
0:05:54 that had to be trained in a house where all appliances
0:05:56 and all lights were on at the same time.
0:05:58 This just said, we figured out a way
0:06:00 that you only have to have the lights on in the room you’re in
0:06:04 and is consuming a fraction of the processing power
0:06:06 and the energy of you will.
0:06:09 DeepSeq just proved it’s no longer a game dominated
0:06:10 by US tech giants.
0:06:14 And this is essentially the market has said, again,
0:06:18 maybe we overestimated investment versus innovation,
0:06:19 but there’s more to the story.
0:06:23 DeepSeq didn’t just develop this tech, they open sourced it.
0:06:25 That means they shared the underlying code
0:06:27 for others to build on.
0:06:29 – Well, open sourced AI accelerates innovation.
0:06:31 It does come with serious risks.
0:06:33 Many experts argue that US companies
0:06:35 shouldn’t open source their technologies
0:06:37 because they could be exploited to spread disinformation
0:06:39 or even create autonomous weapons.
0:06:41 This is essentially given the Chinese
0:06:43 that you could argue sort of open source,
0:06:46 the opportunity to catch up and even blow by this.
0:06:50 And this has so many kind of second order effects.
0:06:54 First off, not only did chip stocks fall
0:06:56 or the AI stocks fall, and we’ll talk more about that,
0:06:59 but the second order effects was that there had been
0:07:02 an equally vicious run up of energy stocks
0:07:04 because the choking point in what we thought
0:07:08 was gonna be an energy hungry AI world.
0:07:09 You saw constellation energy,
0:07:11 you saw all these energy stocks skyrocket,
0:07:14 they had a significant drawdown
0:07:17 because maybe energy isn’t going to be as scarce
0:07:19 as we had originally thought
0:07:24 because of the fact that AI may not be quite as power hungry
0:07:25 as we’d originally anticipated.
0:07:27 This is really shaking up global markets.
0:07:29 I wouldn’t say investors are panicking,
0:07:30 but there’s definitely been a drawdown.
0:07:33 Nvidia shares plummeted 17% on Monday
0:07:35 after DeepSeq debuted its AI system,
0:07:38 wiping out, get the 600 billion in market value.
0:07:40 This marked Nvidia’s worst trading day
0:07:42 since the pandemic crash in 2020.
0:07:45 Now, having said that, we’ve got some context here,
0:07:46 that takes them all the way back
0:07:49 to where the stock was in October.
0:07:50 And when stocks run up like this,
0:07:52 it is like a balloon inflating.
0:07:56 And if it becomes more and more inflated/overinflated,
0:07:58 the smallest scratch can pop the balloon.
0:08:01 And I think that in addition to this news,
0:08:04 it’s likely that these stocks had such incredible run ups
0:08:06 that the market was looking for kind of any excuse
0:08:10 or any slight brush of the balloon to pop, if you will.
0:08:12 But still, this gives you a sense also
0:08:14 of how scary it is that markets is concentrated
0:08:16 because at 600 billion dollars,
0:08:19 you have essentially wiped out
0:08:20 the value of a smaller stock market.
0:08:21 I mean, that’s the value
0:08:24 of the entire global auto industry, Sons Tesla.
0:08:26 And this is what happens when markets are allowed
0:08:28 to get too concentrated.
0:08:30 The other second order effect, I find fascinating.
0:08:31 It’s on fascinado, okay?
0:08:33 What’s French and fast?
0:08:34 What’s fascinating in French?
0:08:36 I don’t know.
0:08:40 But anyways, effectively you have this argument
0:08:43 for global trade and that is what would have happened
0:08:46 if we had continued to ship Nvidia chips to China?
0:08:48 Would they have been as motivated
0:08:50 to figure out a work around here
0:08:53 that would have resulted in what is probably,
0:08:57 I mean, this is just, I’m blown away, I’m blown away.
0:09:00 But at the same time, this kind of is following
0:09:02 where most markets evolved to.
0:09:03 And that is eventually over time,
0:09:05 everything goes Android and iOS.
0:09:06 What do I mean by that?
0:09:07 Scott, what do you mean by that?
0:09:08 What’s going on?
0:09:10 You’re on a train, you’re in the channel,
0:09:14 you’re underneath water, you’re going 320 kilometers per hour.
0:09:15 It’s time to put on your thinking cap.
0:09:17 You got peace, do some deep breathing
0:09:20 and then really bring us some blue flame clarity here.
0:09:23 Essentially, every market bifurcates
0:09:25 into Walmart or Tiffany.
0:09:28 And that is, as a species, the easiest way
0:09:30 to process information is zeros and ones.
0:09:33 And we’ve essentially based all innovation
0:09:35 or computing on binary code, zero and one.
0:09:36 Why?
0:09:37 It is easy to understand yes and no.
0:09:39 It’s easy to understand, I’m interested in you,
0:09:42 I’m not interested in you, I’m friend, I’m foe, right?
0:09:44 So we distill everything down
0:09:46 to a basic binary decision framework.
0:09:49 That is the fastest way to make decisions.
0:09:52 It is the fastest way to process information.
0:09:55 So the entire consumer world bifurcates
0:09:57 into a binary set of decisions.
0:10:00 Do I want the most stuff at the lowest price?
0:10:01 Okay, that’s Amazon.
0:10:03 Okay, that’s Walmart.
0:10:04 Okay, that’s Costco.
0:10:07 Do I want something more artisanal, that’s special,
0:10:10 that has self-expressive benefit that makes me feel
0:10:12 as if I’m in the company of God?
0:10:15 By the way, the reason why we buy luxury goods
0:10:17 is one, it makes us more attractive to potential mates.
0:10:19 When I have a Porsche, it says I’m a baller,
0:10:21 when I’m a member of Maison Estelle
0:10:23 or the new Crane Club or Shea Margo.
0:10:24 I just went there last week.
0:10:27 Oh my God, talk about a lot of hot people.
0:10:30 Jesus Christ, I mean, come on.
0:10:31 Where do those people come up?
0:10:33 They’re like those warlocks or whatever they are.
0:10:34 Where do they come from?
0:10:36 Do they just descend from the ground at like 9 p.m.
0:10:38 and go to these members only clubs in New York?
0:10:40 Anyway, zero and one, right?
0:10:43 The one, the artisanal stuff, self-expressive benefit
0:10:46 and two, and two, making more attractive to mates,
0:10:48 makes you feel closer to God.
0:10:49 The message about taking a Veneta bag,
0:10:51 the slope on the back of a Range Rover
0:10:53 makes you feel like it steals you
0:10:54 in the presence of something.
0:10:55 Why do we do that?
0:10:59 Why do we slow down and find inspiration and spirituality
0:11:01 as if we’re closer to God?
0:11:04 It’s because the majority of the great artisanal work
0:11:05 throughout history has been sequestered
0:11:07 to mosque, temples, and churches.
0:11:08 When you go into St. Peter’s Cathedral,
0:11:10 you’re like, oh my God, do you see the pieta?
0:11:11 Is that what it’s called?
0:11:14 You think Jesus Christ, maybe God does hang out here,
0:11:16 or God, maybe Jesus Christ does hang out here.
0:11:17 Maybe they’re both together.
0:11:19 Maybe it’s a father-son basketball tournament,
0:11:22 by the way, by far, the best moment I’ve ever had.
0:11:22 Ever had?
0:11:23 One of the top moments I’ve ever had
0:11:27 was father-son basketball game, eighth grade, golf stream.
0:11:31 Daddy had practiced in the backyard with his son, boom,
0:11:34 steals the ball, break away, dish off to his son,
0:11:36 three, two, one, scores the layup.
0:11:39 Eighth grade wins, hello!
0:11:43 My son has never been less embarrassed of me in his life.
0:11:46 Anyway, back to me.
0:11:49 You have churches and mosques where we got used to seeing
0:11:51 these incredible works of artisanship,
0:11:53 such that when we see these really beautiful things,
0:11:55 it does still us, it makes us feel more spiritual,
0:11:57 it makes us feel maybe this is all worthwhile,
0:11:59 or maybe there’s some, maybe I’m gonna go hang out
0:12:02 with my parents and my old dog or something like that.
0:12:06 But this is the one, that’s the one,
0:12:07 the zero is the low cost.
0:12:09 Everything is bifurcating the zero one.
0:12:11 Now, the question is, I would offer,
0:12:13 I would posit, I would argue, is the following?
0:12:15 Is AI going the same way of all retail
0:12:16 and all consumer markets?
0:12:18 Are we going to have a zero layer,
0:12:21 super inexpensive, open source, built on things?
0:12:24 And then are we gonna have the Tiffany and the artisanship?
0:12:27 And that is companies will still spend a great deal of money
0:12:31 on a massive amount of compute, super sophisticated LLMs
0:12:35 that do more sophisticated, artisanal, difficult work,
0:12:37 in that we’re essentially going where every market is going,
0:12:40 and that is we’re going Android and get a free phone
0:12:43 with a great operating system for free, essentially,
0:12:47 if you go Android or iOS, where the cost of a phone
0:12:51 will command three months average salary of a Hungarian.
0:12:55 So I don’t know if this is the end of kind of AI
0:12:57 as we know it, or these companies.
0:12:59 There is a risk here, and that is when you have
0:13:04 the magnificent 10 representing 27% of the S&P,
0:13:07 and now the S&P or the US market represents 50%
0:13:10 of global value, of 13% of the global economy
0:13:12 kind of wrapped up, or at least led by
0:13:14 a small number of companies.
0:13:16 And if one sneezes, the entire fucking thing
0:13:18 might catch a cold, and that is the world might,
0:13:21 or the world economy might get pneumonia
0:13:23 if there’s a serious drawdown in these stocks.
0:13:25 I also think it reflects some of our arrogance
0:13:27 that people like me about out there saying,
0:13:29 we’re all AI, who’s doing anything important around AI,
0:13:32 and China said, I know, China’s core competence,
0:13:35 they’re exercising here, China’s core competence,
0:13:38 supply chain, and number two, IP theft.
0:13:42 They basically steal the plans of the IP
0:13:45 and the architectural plans of a cell tower from Siemens,
0:13:48 and instead of building it for $200,000,
0:13:50 they offer it for $40,000.
0:13:52 The majority of people think espionage
0:13:54 is some good looking guy killing another agent
0:13:56 and then banging the foreign agent or the double agent
0:13:58 and then rolling around in an Austin Martin.
0:13:59 No, that’s not espionage.
0:14:01 Espionage is the following.
0:14:04 It’s an overweight guy who’s the personal assistant
0:14:08 to some attache or some senior executive at Google
0:14:11 who gets proprietary information on their new LLM
0:14:14 or their new search algorithm, puts it on a thumb drive,
0:14:16 and then gives it to his handler,
0:14:18 and then they ship it to Beijing.
0:14:19 The majority of espionage right now
0:14:22 isn’t about killing spies or state secrets,
0:14:23 it’s about corporate espionage.
0:14:25 This is economic warfare.
0:14:27 Think about how few wars are really when you think about it
0:14:30 relative to the economic warfare that takes place every day.
0:14:35 So number one, confidence of China is in fact supply chain.
0:14:38 Number two is IP theft or specifically espionage.
0:14:40 By the way, that’s not unusual.
0:14:42 If you wanna grow your economy faster than 5% a year,
0:14:43 you have to engage in massive theft,
0:14:45 which is what we did during the 19th century
0:14:49 when we stole European textile and manufacturing technology
0:14:53 and littered the Eastern seaboard with these factories
0:14:56 where we could take advantage of our abundant resources.
0:14:58 We even kidnapped artisans
0:14:59 and people could operate this machinery.
0:15:01 So IP theft is not unique to China,
0:15:02 they’re just doing it better than us
0:15:03 and we’re pissed off about it.
0:15:06 And this is kind of the ultimate example, right?
0:15:08 They took our open source, they sort of borrowed it,
0:15:11 so it’s not really theft, call it IP leasing.
0:15:14 And they said, I know we can come up with more for less.
0:15:16 We did work around not because you wouldn’t ship us
0:15:18 those fancy American ships,
0:15:20 and we have figured out potentially a way
0:15:22 to have the Walmart of AI.
0:15:25 This will rock the markets, but I would argue,
0:15:27 I would argue this is a natural evolution
0:15:30 where we’re bifurcating into zeros and ones
0:15:31 where Walmart and Tiffany.
0:15:36 We’ll be right back for our conversation with Sahil Bloom.
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0:18:03 – Welcome back, here’s our conversation
0:18:05 with Sahil Bloom, an investor, entrepreneur and writer
0:18:08 known for his newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle.
0:18:12 – Sahil, where does this podcast find you?
0:18:14 – I’m in Westchester, New York,
0:18:15 just outside New York City.
0:18:16 – Nice.
0:18:19 So in your debut book titled The Five Types of Wealth,
0:18:22 a transformative guide to design your dream life,
0:18:23 you write about five types of wealth.
0:18:25 Time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth,
0:18:28 physical wealth and financial wealth.
0:18:30 Can you break these down for us?
0:18:31 – Absolutely.
0:18:34 Time wealth is all about freedom to choose.
0:18:36 How you spend your time, who you spend it with,
0:18:39 where you spend it, when you trade it for other things.
0:18:41 It’s fundamentally about an awareness
0:18:44 of the precious nature of time,
0:18:47 of time as your most precious asset.
0:18:49 Social wealth is all about your relationships.
0:18:51 These are the people that you love,
0:18:53 the depth of a few close relationships
0:18:55 and then the breath, the connection to something
0:18:57 bigger than yourself.
0:19:00 Mental wealth is about purpose, it’s about growth,
0:19:03 it’s about creating the space necessary in your life
0:19:05 to engage and wrestle with some of those
0:19:08 bigger unanswerable questions in the world,
0:19:10 whether through religion, solitude,
0:19:12 spirituality, meditation.
0:19:17 Physical wealth is about taking the controllable actions
0:19:19 on a daily basis to fight the natural decay
0:19:22 and atrophy that your body goes through with aging.
0:19:24 It’s all about your health and vitality.
0:19:27 And then financial wealth, as I talk about it,
0:19:30 is what you think of, net worth, money.
0:19:33 But with the specific nuance of really focusing in
0:19:35 on your definition of enough,
0:19:37 what it means to have enough,
0:19:39 to wrestle with the idea that your expectations
0:19:42 are really your single greatest financial liability.
0:19:45 If your expectations rise faster than your assets,
0:19:47 you will never feel wealthy.
0:19:49 – You talk about this term,
0:19:52 or you use the term arrival fallacy.
0:19:54 Why is it important for everyone to understand
0:19:55 and what is it?
0:20:00 – The arrival fallacy is this common psychological phenomenon
0:20:03 that we’ve all experienced in one form or another in our life.
0:20:07 It is the idea that we prop up these specific achievements,
0:20:10 goals, or destinations as the point
0:20:12 when we will feel we have arrived.
0:20:14 It could be the promotion, it could be the title,
0:20:18 it could be the bonus, the pay raise, whatever the thing is,
0:20:21 we tell ourselves that once we get to X,
0:20:23 we are going to feel that feeling of happiness
0:20:24 and contentment that will be durable.
0:20:28 And unfortunately, it is a fallacy, meaning you get to it,
0:20:32 you feel that sort of momentary dopamine-infused euphoria,
0:20:36 and then you immediately reset to some new arrival
0:20:38 that you need, some new height, some new summit.
0:20:41 – You also talk a little bit about this term life-raiser,
0:20:43 what did you mean by that?
0:20:45 – The idea of a life-raiser is
0:20:50 to have a single identity-defining statement or rule
0:20:53 that allows you to literally cut through the noise
0:20:55 at different points in your life.
0:20:59 So the term razor broadly used is from philosophy
0:21:01 and it’s an idea of having a rule of thumb
0:21:03 that allows you to simplify decision-making.
0:21:05 Occam’s razor is kind of the most famous one
0:21:06 that most people know.
0:21:09 It says that the simplest possible explanation
0:21:10 is often the best one.
0:21:14 The idea of a life-raiser is to have a similar simple rule
0:21:15 that allows you to navigate
0:21:17 whatever chaos or opportunities come.
0:21:22 It is a statement, say, a single thing that you could say
0:21:23 to help you navigate those situations.
0:21:27 An example would be Mark Randolph, the CEO of Netflix,
0:21:30 who often talks about the fact that he had a rule
0:21:34 to never skip a Tuesday dinner with his wife.
0:21:37 He had a hard rule when he founded Netflix originally.
0:21:38 He was the first CEO of the company
0:21:41 that at Tuesday at 5 p.m., no matter what was happening
0:21:43 at the company, he would leave work
0:21:45 and go have dinner with his wife.
0:21:47 And that was an identity-defining rule,
0:21:50 meaning it had ripple effects into every other area.
0:21:53 It meant that he created these boundaries in his life,
0:21:55 that while he was pursuing all these professional aspirations,
0:21:58 navigating the chaos of founding a technology company,
0:22:01 he still put his family and his relationships first,
0:22:03 that empowered other people to do the same.
0:22:06 It had all these ripple effects in his life.
0:22:08 And it meant something in terms of
0:22:10 how his ideal self showed up in the world.
0:22:12 So having a similar rule like that,
0:22:14 that is your life-raiser.
0:22:15 It’s that single point of focus
0:22:18 that helps you navigate through the chaos in life.
0:22:19 – It strikes me when we go back
0:22:22 to the different forms of wealth, time, social,
0:22:24 mental, physical, and financial,
0:22:26 that you can’t have it all.
0:22:29 You can have it all just not at once.
0:22:31 And that is, I found that my time,
0:22:35 social, mental, and physical wealth took a backseat
0:22:37 when I was younger in an attempt
0:22:39 to establish financial wealth,
0:22:41 or at least establish the trajectory.
0:22:44 And then once I achieved financial wealth,
0:22:46 I was able to go back and work on the previous four.
0:22:49 So, and I think it’s anyone’s gonna argue with you
0:22:52 around the different types of wealth as you define them.
0:22:54 You know, the trick is finding the balance
0:22:57 and knowing when to trade off one for the other.
0:22:59 Have you given any thought to the fulcrum
0:23:01 between the five of these?
0:23:02 – Absolutely.
0:23:05 And exactly what you said relates to something
0:23:07 that I talk about and write about often,
0:23:10 which is your life has seasons.
0:23:12 And what you prioritize or focus on
0:23:14 during any one season will change.
0:23:18 So your 20s and early 30s are an incredible time
0:23:20 to focus on building financial wealth
0:23:21 because we know compounding,
0:23:23 it’s going to compound for the rest of our journey.
0:23:25 It’s a great time to focus there.
0:23:27 That being said, the traditional wisdom
0:23:28 around these different types of wealth
0:23:31 is that they exist on these on/off switches
0:23:34 and that to turn on financial wealth all the way,
0:23:35 you have to turn off the others.
0:23:37 And the unfortunate thing with that mindset
0:23:41 is that a lot of these things will atrophy and die
0:23:44 if you don’t invest in them at all.
0:23:45 You know, it’s sort of like thinking about,
0:23:48 you know, when you look at a chart of compounding,
0:23:49 yes, you know, 1% per day,
0:23:51 everyone likes to show that chart,
0:23:53 gets you to 37X after a year.
0:23:56 The unfortunate thing is the negative 1% per day,
0:23:58 which effectively zeros you out after a year.
0:24:01 And that is really the risk that people run
0:24:03 by living with that on/off switch mindset.
0:24:04 And so what I like to do,
0:24:06 the mindset shift that I talk about in the book
0:24:09 is these areas all exist on a dimmer switch.
0:24:11 And just because you have one turned all the way up,
0:24:14 that might be financial wealth in your 20s and 30s,
0:24:16 does not mean the other ones should be turned completely off.
0:24:19 You can still do the tiny little investment
0:24:22 on a daily basis that compounds positively
0:24:24 because anything above zero compounds
0:24:26 in the direction that you’re heading.
0:24:29 So if you think about it just tactically
0:24:30 for your relationships as an example,
0:24:32 even while you’re focusing on your financial wealth
0:24:34 and on building your career,
0:24:36 sending the one text to your parents
0:24:38 to just let them know you were thinking about them,
0:24:39 making the phone call,
0:24:40 planning that one extra trip,
0:24:43 getting together with the old friend for the coffee
0:24:45 or gathering the group for the one annual trip.
0:24:48 Those are things that compound positively in that domain
0:24:49 that don’t take a whole lot of effort.
0:24:51 The dimmer switch can be turned down
0:24:54 without it zeroing you out.
0:24:55 – I really liked that.
0:24:57 You know, I think about you don’t need
0:24:58 to call your mom every day.
0:25:01 I mean, ideally you can and should,
0:25:03 but if you’re working exceptionally hard,
0:25:06 if you only have time to call her once a week,
0:25:07 that one call becomes much more important
0:25:09 and has a higher ROI.
0:25:14 I say this because in order to achieve financial security,
0:25:16 I traded off a lot of those things.
0:25:20 And I did try to be home for dinner or at least bath time.
0:25:24 You know, I’m self-conscious which I am,
0:25:27 but I like the notion that even if you take it down
0:25:29 to 10 or 20%,
0:25:33 that is infinitely better than taking it down to zero.
0:25:37 Any specific thoughts about managing the relationship
0:25:40 with your partner as you’re trying to kind of not go all
0:25:44 in, but go mostly in on establishing financial wealth?
0:25:48 – There are similar principles, I would say,
0:25:51 to you’re sort of the analog to texting
0:25:52 or calling your mom once a week
0:25:55 that you can leverage in your romantic relationship.
0:25:57 So while you are chasing that purpose
0:25:58 of building a big company
0:26:00 or going all in on your financial wealth,
0:26:02 making sure that you create a regular cadence
0:26:05 for proper kind of zoom out conversations
0:26:06 with your partner.
0:26:08 This entrepreneur named Brad Feld
0:26:11 had this concept called the life dinner, which I love.
0:26:15 It’s the idea of doing a once a month regular cadence date
0:26:16 where you get together
0:26:19 to actually talk about some of the bigger picture things
0:26:21 in each of your life’s lives and in your relationship.
0:26:23 So talk about some of the challenges,
0:26:24 some of the opportunities,
0:26:26 the things you’re excited about,
0:26:27 the things you’re stressed about,
0:26:29 but create a regular cadence around it.
0:26:32 Because what happens in life is when things get stressful,
0:26:33 when you have a young child in the house
0:26:35 or when you’re chasing some financial goal,
0:26:37 you forget to do that.
0:26:38 And so your ongoing communication
0:26:41 just becomes this sort of two ships in the night,
0:26:43 little things here and there.
0:26:44 And you forget to zoom out
0:26:46 and talk about some of those bigger picture questions
0:26:51 that actually contribute to true growth in a relationship.
0:26:53 So I’ve always thought that was a really helpful framing
0:26:55 for thinking about that.
0:26:58 – And you talked about,
0:27:00 when you were talking about social wealth,
0:27:03 you talked about front row people.
0:27:05 What was the Harvard study of adult development
0:27:07 and why do you consider it the most impactful study
0:27:09 of the last 100 years?
0:27:10 – The Harvard study of adult development
0:27:13 is this incredible longitudinal study
0:27:15 that was conducted over the course of 85 plus years.
0:27:19 They followed the lives of 1,300 original participants,
0:27:22 plus another 700 or so direct descendants.
0:27:24 And what they found was rather remarkable.
0:27:27 They found that the single greatest predictor
0:27:29 of physical health at age 80
0:27:32 was relationship satisfaction at age 50.
0:27:36 It wasn’t how their cholesterol was, their blood pressure,
0:27:37 wasn’t their smoking or drinking habits.
0:27:39 It was how they felt about their relationships
0:27:42 that contributed to their healthy aging.
0:27:43 So we know scientifically
0:27:45 that the strength of our relationships
0:27:48 actually determines our health and happiness in our life.
0:27:51 And yet, when you ask people what they’re investing in
0:27:54 on a daily basis, relationships are one of the first things
0:27:55 that fall by the wayside.
0:27:57 We don’t think to invest in relationships
0:28:00 in the same way that we think to invest in a financial asset.
0:28:03 We know putting $100 away in the S&P 500
0:28:05 is gonna compound and grow into our future.
0:28:07 The exact same principle applies to your relationships
0:28:10 and you need to have that mindset shift to do it.
0:28:12 The concept of front row people
0:28:16 is a sort of visualization and representation of that fact.
0:28:19 This concept of closing your eyes
0:28:21 and thinking about at your own funeral,
0:28:23 who are going to be the people
0:28:24 that sit down in the front row?
0:28:26 Who are those people that occupy
0:28:30 that incredibly special cherished space in your life?
0:28:33 And are you recognizing those people on a daily basis?
0:28:35 Are you showing up for them?
0:28:38 Are you being a front row person to someone else?
0:28:41 – You also talk about insights that you gathered
0:28:44 from couples who have been married 40 plus years.
0:28:46 What are some of those insights?
0:28:50 – I love talking to older people
0:28:54 about their kind of wisdom from their lives.
0:28:56 And the reason I find it so powerful
0:28:59 is just because they have the earned wisdom
0:29:00 that none of us have.
0:29:01 And so I went and talked to couples
0:29:06 that have been married for 500 total years
0:29:07 across all of them.
0:29:10 And a few of the ones that I thought jumped out.
0:29:13 Number one was never keep score in love.
0:29:17 Just the idea of in relationships
0:29:19 living with a quid pro quo mindset
0:29:21 is a recipe for disaster.
0:29:24 It’s not always gonna be 50/50 in a relationship.
0:29:26 Sometimes it’s going to be 90/10.
0:29:28 Sometimes it’s going to be 10/90.
0:29:29 But the important thing
0:29:31 is that it always adds up to 100.
0:29:33 And then one of the other ones that I absolutely loved
0:29:36 was just the idea of never involve
0:29:41 a non-professional third party in your relationship conflicts
0:29:43 because you will forget about the thing
0:29:45 but they never will.
0:29:49 So telling your mother or mother-in-law, sister,
0:29:51 whoever about the relationship conflict
0:29:53 that you were having is often a recipe
0:29:54 for struggle down the line
0:29:56 because you will hear about it from them a year or two later
0:29:59 even once you’ve completely moved past the thing.
0:30:02 We’ll be right back.
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0:31:08 Support for PropG comes from Domo.
0:31:09 Some businesses thrive on data,
0:31:11 but sometimes all of those numbers
0:31:12 can seem like a maze to sift through.
0:31:15 What if you could simply ask your data a question
0:31:16 and get a quick answer back?
0:31:18 Questions like how are sales is quarter?
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0:32:14 (upbeat music)
0:32:22 – What has earned status and how is it different
0:32:25 from sort of the more traditional views on status?
0:32:26 – Status is an interesting topic
0:32:31 because it’s very easy to demonize.
0:32:34 And at the end of the day, we are status seeking creatures
0:32:35 and there’s actually nothing wrong with that.
0:32:39 Status is a very smart way of organizing as a society.
0:32:41 And frankly, it has helped us in many ways as humans
0:32:43 to navigate all of the changes
0:32:46 that we’ve endured over the thousands of years.
0:32:48 The point though is you wanna chase
0:32:51 and play the right kind of status games.
0:32:54 The way that we typically think of accumulating status,
0:32:55 when you think about status,
0:32:57 the way I think about it is what you’re looking for
0:32:59 is the respect and admiration of others.
0:33:00 You want to kind of stack up
0:33:02 and have their respect and admiration.
0:33:05 The way that people typically today try to do that
0:33:08 is through acquired status symbols.
0:33:09 It’s through the watch, it’s the car,
0:33:11 it’s the fancy club membership,
0:33:14 it’s the expensive bottles of wine.
0:33:16 And we think that those are going to confer
0:33:19 this lasting respect and admiration upon us.
0:33:21 And unfortunately they don’t.
0:33:24 Otherwise lottery winners would be held
0:33:26 in the highest possible regard among society
0:33:29 because they have a whole lot of those status symbols.
0:33:32 The reality is that real status has to be earned.
0:33:35 It is built through these hard one treasures,
0:33:38 these things that require long periods of time to build,
0:33:40 things like a healthy fit physique,
0:33:42 things like deep meaningful relationships
0:33:43 with the people that you love,
0:33:46 things like building a meaningful business,
0:33:48 creating a whole bunch of value, creating jobs.
0:33:51 Those are the things that actually confer upon us
0:33:54 the lasting durable respect and admiration that we want.
0:33:57 And so the question in the test that I always try to ask
0:33:59 is what I call the bot status test.
0:34:01 Before buying something, you ask yourself,
0:34:05 would I buy this thing if I couldn’t tell anyone about it?
0:34:06 If I couldn’t take a picture of it,
0:34:08 if I couldn’t show it to anyone else,
0:34:10 would I still want the thing?
0:34:11 And usually that’ll cut through the noise
0:34:14 of whether you’re doing it as an attempt at bot status
0:34:16 or if it is something that truly provides utility
0:34:18 and happiness in your life.
0:34:21 – And the part of the book that I think
0:34:23 will probably stand out the most to people
0:34:25 or be the most read or reread will be,
0:34:28 you have a list of what you call mental health hacks
0:34:30 that you wish you knew at the age of 22.
0:34:32 Share some of your favorites.
0:34:36 – Yeah, this is a collaboration with Susan Kane
0:34:38 who is, for those who don’t know,
0:34:40 an incredible multi-time,
0:34:42 number one New York Times bestselling author.
0:34:43 She wrote the book Quiet,
0:34:46 which is one of the most famous books of all time
0:34:48 written about the power of introverts
0:34:49 and an extroverted world.
0:34:52 And a few of my favorites from that collaboration,
0:34:55 number one was your purpose in life
0:34:58 does not have to be related to what you do for work.
0:35:00 Your purpose in life does not have to be grand or ambitious.
0:35:03 Your purpose in life simply has to be yours.
0:35:07 And in a lot of ways this is a statement
0:35:10 that has rang true throughout history.
0:35:11 If we trace this back in history,
0:35:15 the Bhagavad Gita famous Hindu epic
0:35:17 talks about the idea of Dharma.
0:35:18 It’s the idea of your sacred duty.
0:35:19 That is your purpose.
0:35:21 And it was that exact statement
0:35:23 that it doesn’t have to be impressive to anyone else.
0:35:25 It just has to be yours.
0:35:27 To me, that is such an empowering idea
0:35:30 for your mental wealth because you recognize that
0:35:33 you actually don’t need to impress others
0:35:34 with the things you’re doing.
0:35:38 You don’t need to trying to be impact a billion lives
0:35:41 or do this grand, amazing things, make a billion dollars.
0:35:42 Whatever the thing is,
0:35:44 your purpose could be as simple as providing
0:35:45 for the people that you love,
0:35:47 showing up in the way that you want to in the world
0:35:50 in a way that you feel like you didn’t have in your life.
0:35:54 That is such a powerful and empowering notion to me.
0:35:54 – That was nice.
0:35:59 You also talk about the Feynman technique.
0:36:03 – So Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist,
0:36:07 won the Nobel Prize in I believe quantum electrodynamics.
0:36:09 And what he was known for
0:36:12 was the fact that he was able to simplify complex topics.
0:36:13 He was able to teach them in terms
0:36:15 that anyone could understand.
0:36:18 And that was really the mark of true genius
0:36:20 that he had was his ability to do that.
0:36:22 The concept of the Feynman technique
0:36:26 is that the most powerful way to learn anything
0:36:28 is to teach it to others.
0:36:30 You cannot teach something to others
0:36:33 if you don’t truly understand it yourself.
0:36:36 And the actual operationalization of this idea
0:36:39 is as you were attempting to learn something new,
0:36:41 the first thing you need to do is default
0:36:42 to trying to teach it to someone else.
0:36:46 And ideally teach it to someone else who is uninitiated,
0:36:49 sort of explain it to a five year old, if you will.
0:36:50 So you’re learning a concept,
0:36:52 you go try to explain it to someone
0:36:53 who doesn’t understand that.
0:36:56 You will immediately know where there were gaps
0:36:57 in your understanding or knowledge
0:36:59 because the other person will expose them
0:37:01 through the points where they’re getting confused.
0:37:02 That ends up being the places
0:37:04 where you need to study more, fill in those gaps,
0:37:08 and you’ll kind of have this natural iterative process
0:37:10 between teaching and learning
0:37:12 that will lead you to a true depth of understanding
0:37:13 on any topic.
0:37:15 – What are the three pillars of physical wealth
0:37:17 that you break down in your book?
0:37:20 – I talk about the three pillars of physical wealth
0:37:23 as movement, nutrition, and recovery.
0:37:25 And the reason I think it’s so important
0:37:27 to identify these pillars is because we live
0:37:30 in a social media age where you are bombarded
0:37:33 by complex sexy information
0:37:35 when it comes to your physical health.
0:37:37 You know, you are being convinced
0:37:39 that unless you are willing to do the Brian Johnson
0:37:42 and spend millions of dollars a year on your health,
0:37:44 that you’re not gonna be able to get healthy.
0:37:46 And unfortunately for a beginner,
0:37:50 that type of information is really intimidating and scary.
0:37:52 And it actually impedes starting.
0:37:53 It halts you from starting
0:37:56 because you view it as such an intimidating pursuit.
0:37:59 The reality is that level one
0:38:01 of the physical wealth video game, if you will,
0:38:04 is very, very simple across those three pillars.
0:38:06 Move your body for 30 minutes a day.
0:38:08 Don’t care if it’s walking, jogging, hiking, biking,
0:38:10 running, rowing, whatever you like doing,
0:38:11 move your body for 30 minutes a day.
0:38:15 Nutrition, eat whole unprocessed foods at 80% of your meals.
0:38:18 That’s 17 out of 21 meals during the week.
0:38:21 And then recovery, just try to sleep seven hours a night.
0:38:22 If you can do those three things,
0:38:25 you are probably getting at 80% of the value
0:38:26 in this domain and you’re getting ahead
0:38:28 of the vast majority of people.
0:38:30 Very, very simple and super cost effective.
0:38:33 You don’t have to do the crazy complex regimen
0:38:34 to get there.
0:38:36 – Finally, the last type of wealth, financial wealth.
0:38:39 What can you, or what can people do to build financial wealth?
0:38:42 What does the research say about the connection
0:38:44 between money and happiness?
0:38:46 – The research on money and happiness
0:38:49 is actually rather clear at this point.
0:38:50 The numbers vary.
0:38:52 And we’ve all seen the famous Kahneman study
0:38:54 that said $70,000 a year.
0:38:56 Above that, you’re no longer getting happier.
0:38:58 And it’s an old study and it’s been disputed
0:38:59 in various forms.
0:39:02 And more recent things by Matthew Killingsworth
0:39:05 have said something more like $200,000, $300,000.
0:39:07 The reality is that all of those numbers
0:39:10 are inherently flawed because they are applying
0:39:11 an average to the population.
0:39:15 And as, I think it wasn’t a seem to live one said,
0:39:16 you should never cross a river
0:39:18 if it’s four feet deep on average.
0:39:20 Because in different places,
0:39:21 it’s gonna be much deeper than that.
0:39:23 And if you live in New York City,
0:39:26 the number is gonna be very different than Omaha, Nebraska.
0:39:28 The point, though, of all of that research
0:39:31 is above a certain level,
0:39:34 there are very diminishing returns to incremental money.
0:39:36 The incremental happiness gains that you have
0:39:39 are going to come from these other types of wealth.
0:39:43 And so the pursuit of money that we get patterned into
0:39:44 in those early years,
0:39:45 where there is a direct correlation
0:39:47 between money and happiness,
0:39:49 sort of becomes our default setting
0:39:50 that we continue chasing.
0:39:52 Arthur Brooks talks about this
0:39:54 as us being sort of like mice,
0:39:55 and we ring the bell
0:39:56 and we think we’re gonna get the cheese.
0:39:58 And you pattern that in the early years of your life,
0:40:00 and then you continue chasing it,
0:40:02 thinking that the cheese is gonna be there later in life,
0:40:05 only to realize far too late that it wasn’t.
0:40:07 And that you pursued all of these things,
0:40:08 you made all this money,
0:40:09 but you have three broken marriages
0:40:11 and four kids who don’t talk to you.
0:40:12 You think you won the game,
0:40:14 you got padded on the back the whole way,
0:40:15 but you’re kind of wondering,
0:40:18 was this a game that I really cared to win?
0:40:19 – And doing this research,
0:40:21 what did you uncover that sort of affected
0:40:23 the way you approach your own life?
0:40:26 – I mean, I completely changed my life on this journey.
0:40:31 I was chasing the very traditional definitions of success
0:40:32 for the first seven years of my career.
0:40:35 I was rising through the ranks in the world of investing,
0:40:36 a private equity fund,
0:40:39 and I had a single conversation with an old friend
0:40:42 that fundamentally changed my life.
0:40:44 I went out for a drink,
0:40:45 he asked me how I was doing,
0:40:47 and I told him that it had started to get tough
0:40:50 living so far away from my parents on the East Coast.
0:40:53 I lived 3000 miles away.
0:40:55 They’re getting older, health things, things coming up.
0:40:56 And he asked how old they were.
0:40:58 I said mid sixties.
0:41:00 He asked how often I saw them.
0:41:02 I said about once a year at that point.
0:41:03 And he just looked me and said,
0:41:06 “Okay, so you’re going to see your parents 15 more times
0:41:07 before they die.”
0:41:08 And I just remember feeling
0:41:11 like I’d been punched in the gut.
0:41:13 The idea that the amount of time you have left
0:41:15 with the people that you love most in the world
0:41:19 is that finite and countable just shook me to the core.
0:41:23 And within 45 days, my wife and I had sold our house
0:41:24 in California.
0:41:26 I had left my job and we had moved across the country
0:41:28 to live closer to our families.
0:41:32 And that was the start of this entire journey
0:41:34 because it reminded me of one important fact,
0:41:36 which is you are in much more control
0:41:37 of your time than you think.
0:41:40 That number 15 is now in the hundreds.
0:41:42 I see my parents several times a month.
0:41:46 They’re a huge part of my son, their grandson’s life.
0:41:48 We spend so much time with our families.
0:41:53 And that idea that you can actually control time
0:41:54 is such an empowering notion.
0:41:57 It’s such a realization that the way that we’ve been
0:42:00 measuring, the way that we’ve been measuring our success
0:42:03 in these games can change
0:42:05 and you can take action to change it.
0:42:08 – Sahil Bloom is an investor, entrepreneur and writer,
0:42:10 known for his newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle.
0:42:12 He’s the owner of SRB Holdings
0:42:14 and the managing partner of SRB Ventures
0:42:16 and Early Stage Investment Fund.
0:42:19 His debut book, The Five Types of Wealth,
0:42:21 A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life
0:42:22 is out next week.
0:42:25 He joins us from his home in Westchester
0:42:29 where he is living close to his family.
0:42:31 Sahil really enjoyed this conversation.
0:42:33 Thanks for your time today.
0:42:34 – Thank you for having me.
0:42:47 – Happy, it’s the last question reminded me
0:42:49 just how fleeting your time is
0:42:51 are a couple of these questions
0:42:55 in our interview with Sahil.
0:42:56 It’s just crazy.
0:43:00 Time, as you age, time is really asymptotic
0:43:01 or it falls off a cliff.
0:43:04 It’s kind of going too slow when you’re a kid
0:43:07 or it goes too slow when my kids were kids.
0:43:08 I thought that was painful
0:43:10 when they were babies and toddlers.
0:43:11 Then it hits a nice cadence.
0:43:14 And then when they hit 12 or 13, it just falls off a cliff.
0:43:16 One, they don’t want to spend as much time with you.
0:43:18 And then all of a sudden it dawns on you
0:43:20 that they’re gonna be gone soon.
0:43:25 And I had somebody today ask me, CNN anchor,
0:43:26 I’m gonna start a podcast.
0:43:27 Can you give me some thoughts?
0:43:29 I’m like, well, the thing I can tell you
0:43:30 is the power of now.
0:43:34 And that is just between the time it takes
0:43:36 to decide you want to do a podcast
0:43:38 and all the planning and strategy.
0:43:42 Cut out most of that and just get a mic,
0:43:43 some podcast equipment,
0:43:46 hire a producer and start now.
0:43:47 And the first one’s gonna suck
0:43:49 and make the second one a little bit better.
0:43:51 Just Mr. Beast it.
0:43:52 I feel the same way now.
0:43:54 And I’ve gotten so much better at this
0:43:56 about now with my kids.
0:44:00 Oh my gosh, I have a weekend alone with my 14 year old.
0:44:04 Let’s take the Eurostart of Paris and go see a PSG game.
0:44:05 And I’m privileged and then I can afford it.
0:44:06 But you know what?
0:44:08 It’s not that expensive.
0:44:09 The hardest part is in the money.
0:44:11 The hardest stuff is now.
0:44:13 Like, sure, you can get tickets on the Eurostart
0:44:14 that aren’t that expensive.
0:44:15 You can find an Airbnb.
0:44:16 You can get shitty seats.
0:44:18 And by the way, the great thing about a 14 year old
0:44:19 is there are no shitty seats.
0:44:22 I remember getting bad seats to an Arsenal game
0:44:23 and I was all pissed off
0:44:25 ’cause I think of myself as being important.
0:44:27 And my son looked at me and was like, this is amazing.
0:44:28 Look at how high up we are.
0:44:31 So kids just want to be with you.
0:44:34 They just want to do really crazy things.
0:44:37 So if you’re living, I don’t know,
0:44:38 in Buckhead or somewhere and you think,
0:44:41 okay, we haven’t been to the Aquarium in Atlanta.
0:44:42 When should we go?
0:44:43 We should go now.
0:44:44 What are we doing this weekend?
0:44:48 Now, yet you are gonna look back on these moments
0:44:50 and you are going to treasure them.
0:44:51 So this is what I want you to do.
0:44:54 I want you to shrink the time in between deciding
0:44:56 you’d like to do something and it’s a good idea
0:44:57 and starting to plan it.
0:44:59 And I want you to skip the planning stage
0:45:01 and move right to doing it.
0:45:02 Would this be fun?
0:45:03 Would you like to do this?
0:45:04 Well, we’re gonna do this.
0:45:05 When are we gonna do this?
0:45:07 We’re gonna do it now.
0:45:09 (upbeat music)
0:45:11 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
0:45:13 Our intern is Dan Chalon.
0:45:15 Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:45:17 Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod
0:45:19 and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:45:22 We will catch you on Saturday for “No Mercy, No Mouse”
0:45:23 as read by George Hahn.
0:45:25 And please follow our PropG Markets Pod
0:45:28 wherever you get your pods for new episodes
0:45:29 every Monday and Thursday.
0:45:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:03 Support for Prop G comes from Crescent Family Office.
0:00:05 As an entrepreneur, you spend a lot of time
0:00:06 in energy building your business.
0:00:08 And chances are, you’ve been so busy,
0:00:09 there hasn’t been a ton of time to think about preparing
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0:00:41 (funky music)
0:00:45 – Hey, what you doing?
0:00:48 – Programming our thermostat to 17 degrees
0:00:50 when we’re out at work or asleep.
0:00:51 We’re taking control of our energy
0:00:54 use this winter with some easy energy saving tips
0:00:55 I got from Fortis, BC.
0:00:58 – Ooh, conserve energy and save money?
0:01:00 Maybe to buy those matching winter jackets?
0:01:02 – Uh, no, we’re also getting
0:01:04 that whole matching outfit thing under control.
0:01:07 – Discover low and no cost energy saving tips
0:01:10 at fortisbc.com/energysavingtips.
0:01:12 Matching track suits?
0:01:13 – Please no.
0:01:17 – Mike has always wondered
0:01:20 what makes some people want to play action hero.
0:01:23 – When I see people speeding or skydiving
0:01:25 or surfing on hundred foot waves,
0:01:26 I always think, are you crazy?
0:01:27 What are you doing?
0:01:28 Because I’m like risk averse.
0:01:32 I’m trying to like, you know, keep Mike in one piece.
0:01:34 – But what about people who get their thrills
0:01:36 from playing cop?
0:01:40 This week on Explain It To Me, citizens arrest.
0:01:43 Is it a real thing and should it be?
0:01:45 New episodes every Wednesday.
0:01:50 – Welcome to Office Hours with Pravji.
0:01:52 This is the part of the show where we answer your questions
0:01:54 about business, pick tech, entrepreneurship,
0:01:55 and whatever else is on your mind.
0:01:57 If you’d like to submit a question,
0:01:59 please name all a voice recording
0:02:00 to officehours@propgmedia.com.
0:02:04 Again, that’s officehours@propgmedia.com.
0:02:06 I have not seen or read these questions.
0:02:08 Question number one.
0:02:09 – Hi, Pravji.
0:02:12 I’m Anna from Mexico, currently living in Chicago, Illinois.
0:02:15 First of all, thank you for all your hard work.
0:02:18 I listen to your podcast during my commute to school
0:02:21 and it always makes the ride more enjoyable.
0:02:25 My question is about APOs in Latin America.
0:02:27 One of the predictions you did for 2025
0:02:30 was that emerging markets will become
0:02:32 more attractive to investors.
0:02:35 I had the chance to work for a unicorn in the region
0:02:38 and ever since, I have wondered,
0:02:42 why we don’t see many IPOs in Latin America?
0:02:45 I truly believe that there are amazing companies
0:02:47 led by talented entrepreneurs,
0:02:49 but not many of them go public.
0:02:50 What do you think this is the case
0:02:52 and what do you think could be improved
0:02:54 to help more companies in the region
0:02:55 to take that step?
0:02:59 Thank you so much and thank you for choosing that question.
0:03:00 – Anna from Mexico.
0:03:03 I love your accent and the IPO market.
0:03:06 Since the pandemic, the IPO market in Latin America
0:03:08 has really fluctuated.
0:03:11 In 2021, the region raised about $19 billion,
0:03:13 mostly due to Brazil,
0:03:15 which accounted for about 85% of that capital.
0:03:19 Mexico, in comparison, had only one IPO in 2021.
0:03:21 So basically the IPO market in Mexico
0:03:24 could best be described as kind of like dead.
0:03:25 Other than that, it’s fine.
0:03:26 By 2022 and 2023,
0:03:30 IPO listings came to a complete halt in Brazil.
0:03:31 In the first half of 2024,
0:03:33 the entire Latin American and Caribbean region
0:03:35 registered only four IPOs.
0:03:36 Why?
0:03:39 Essentially, the boring stuff, interest rates.
0:03:42 Rates in Brazil rose over seven points
0:03:43 to nine and a quarter points.
0:03:45 Similarly, interest rates in Mexico
0:03:48 increased from 5.5% to 10.5% in the same period.
0:03:50 At the end of 2022,
0:03:52 the average policy rate in Latin America
0:03:56 stood at 18.9%.
0:03:59 Rising interest rates usually decrease investor confidence,
0:04:01 which typically means an outflow of capital
0:04:03 from equity markets into safer fixed income investments.
0:04:06 In short, when you’re getting paid a lot of money
0:04:08 just to put your money in bonds
0:04:12 or would feel like less volatile or safer investments,
0:04:13 the bar to go public gets much higher
0:04:15 and money flows out of equities
0:04:17 and into fixed income instruments,
0:04:20 thereby creating a less hospitable market for IPOs.
0:04:23 Additionally, the rise of populist left-leaning governments
0:04:25 in Latin America has deterred private investment
0:04:29 in the region, resulting in nearly flatline GDP per capita.
0:04:31 I’m actually quite bullish on Mexico.
0:04:32 I think for a few reasons.
0:04:34 One, more political stability,
0:04:37 I would argue, than the US to proximity.
0:04:40 As we try and divest away from China,
0:04:42 one because of geopolitical tensions,
0:04:45 but also just because of supply chain diversification.
0:04:46 I was on the board of chemical turbine outfitters.
0:04:48 We woke up one day and Mila COVID
0:04:51 realized that the disproportionate 60, 70% of our tops
0:04:55 were being manufactured in a five mile radius of Shenzhen.
0:04:58 And basically all 550 of our stores couldn’t get tops in time
0:05:01 and said, okay, even if it costs us a little bit more,
0:05:03 we need some supply chain diversification.
0:05:04 Basically up until COVID,
0:05:07 supply chain was run for the lowest cost, full stop.
0:05:09 How do we eke out more and more costs?
0:05:12 And it ended up we had absolutely no slack,
0:05:13 meaning any eruption at all.
0:05:16 And everything from your refrigerator to your garage door,
0:05:17 they couldn’t find parts
0:05:18 and the whole thing just kind of collapsed on itself.
0:05:21 So essentially the biggest threat to these companies
0:05:23 is no longer consumer demand,
0:05:26 which has been really strong for the last 16 odd years,
0:05:28 but supply chain interruptions
0:05:31 where basically consumers can’t get what they want.
0:05:33 So there’s this amazing
0:05:35 or this incredible inspired effort
0:05:37 towards supply chain heterogeneity
0:05:39 and then there’s supply chain diversification,
0:05:43 moving stuff out of China into Vietnam,
0:05:44 other Southeast Asian countries.
0:05:46 And also the big beneficiary has been Mexico,
0:05:48 which is now our largest trading partner.
0:05:50 So I’m actually quite bullish on Mexico.
0:05:53 IPOs in general seem to be in,
0:05:55 are they encyclical decline or structural decline?
0:05:57 And that is, it used to be,
0:05:59 if you wanted a company to be worth more
0:06:00 than a few hundred million dollars,
0:06:03 you had to access this deep pool of capital
0:06:04 called the public markets.
0:06:05 There just wasn’t enough capital available
0:06:06 in the private markets.
0:06:10 The biggest VC funds only had two or $300 million funds.
0:06:12 So you went public to access
0:06:14 these big pools of public capital.
0:06:16 That’s no longer the case.
0:06:17 People have gone further downstream
0:06:19 and when they see opportunities,
0:06:21 when they see the company accelerating in value,
0:06:22 they wanna squeeze more and more juice
0:06:24 in the private markets as institutional investors.
0:06:26 So they’re like, we don’t need to go public.
0:06:27 As a matter of fact,
0:06:30 if the existing shareholders or employees
0:06:32 want some liquidity, we can give it to them.
0:06:34 We can do secondary offerings.
0:06:35 We don’t want the scrutiny,
0:06:37 the regulation of the public markets.
0:06:38 So we’ll just stay private.
0:06:40 And oftentimes the private markets
0:06:43 are actually trading any premium to the public markets.
0:06:44 So what do you have?
0:06:47 The number of public companies has been reduced,
0:06:49 I think by two thirds over the last 30 or 40 years.
0:06:50 One, it’s harder to go public.
0:06:51 Two, there’s more regulation.
0:06:53 Three, it’s expensive.
0:06:56 And four, mergers and acquisitions
0:06:58 have taken a lot of public companies off of the rolls.
0:07:03 And finally, finally, being private is kind of equivalent
0:07:05 or maybe even more ideal than going public.
0:07:08 And typically, I think also what’s hurt the public markets
0:07:10 is by the time a company decides to go public,
0:07:12 it’s sort of the last stop on the full train.
0:07:16 And that is Google when they went public, enormous upside.
0:07:17 Same with Metta.
0:07:19 These companies still had enormous upside left.
0:07:20 Now most of the, again,
0:07:22 the juices being squeezed in the private markets.
0:07:24 So by the time it gets to the public markets,
0:07:26 it’s sort of like, well, we’ve run out of people
0:07:28 in the private markets who will bid us up.
0:07:30 Let’s see if we can find stupid retail investors
0:07:33 and some of the public market IPOs have underperformed
0:07:37 and it’s made a less hospitable environment.
0:07:40 But yes, the IPO market in Mexico is dead.
0:07:42 I hope it comes back for all of us.
0:07:44 Thanks for the question.
0:07:45 Question number two.
0:07:49 Hey, Scott, this is Kevin from Colorado.
0:07:50 Long time listener of the pod
0:07:53 and want to tell you how much I appreciate your insights
0:07:54 on helping young men.
0:07:57 Although I’d still like to consider myself young.
0:08:00 In 2025, I’m turning 40
0:08:02 and I’m increasingly feeling the responsibility
0:08:04 to make a positive impact
0:08:07 with the abundance of young men I interact with in my life.
0:08:10 I have three young boys, a younger brother,
0:08:14 four younger brothers-in-law and eight young nephews.
0:08:17 Outside of my family, I own two businesses,
0:08:20 each having many young male employees.
0:08:22 And I’m also active in my church
0:08:26 where I help mentor dozens of young men under 18.
0:08:28 I’m finding it hard to get involved
0:08:31 and help these boys that aren’t my sons
0:08:33 because I don’t want to overstep my bounds.
0:08:35 My question, Scott, is this.
0:08:38 With no shortage of opportunities,
0:08:41 how do you recommend I be more proactive
0:08:43 in helping mentor these young men,
0:08:46 especially those I can see are struggling,
0:08:50 without being overbearing or coming off as weird?
0:08:51 – Boss, you’re doing it.
0:08:54 You know, raising good men,
0:08:57 raising confident, loving, patriotic boys,
0:09:01 that’s kind of 90% of what you’re supposed to be doing.
0:09:02 In terms of helping other boys,
0:09:04 when I can’t stand the gestalt in our society
0:09:07 where we suspect men who want to get involved
0:09:08 in other boys’ lives,
0:09:09 I think that is one of the terrible things
0:09:12 about our society that is largely the fault
0:09:13 of the Catholic Church and Michael Jackson,
0:09:15 which I will not go into,
0:09:17 but your inclinations are the right ones.
0:09:18 One, getting involved in groups,
0:09:20 being a scout leader, you know,
0:09:22 teaching Sunday school, whatever it might be,
0:09:25 but sharing some of that confidence,
0:09:27 being a male role model in groups,
0:09:29 also recognizing, or what I think is a great trick
0:09:33 or not a trick, but I do this sometimes with my boys.
0:09:35 One, my boys are 14 and 17,
0:09:38 so no matter how wonderful or fat the vacation is,
0:09:40 unless they’re with other boys or other people their age,
0:09:41 they’re just not gonna have a good time
0:09:42 and they’re gonna get bored and angry
0:09:44 and make our lives miserable.
0:09:45 So I bring friends.
0:09:49 And what I find is I try and find or encourage them
0:09:52 to invite boys that may not have the opportunity
0:09:56 for whatever to hang out or do the kind of things we do.
0:09:58 So I like to bring my boys friends with them.
0:10:01 And I find you don’t need to do that much.
0:10:05 I think just seeing a healthy father-son relationship,
0:10:06 seeing, you know,
0:10:08 you trying to occasionally ask a few questions,
0:10:10 them asking you a few questions,
0:10:12 it’s really powerful ’cause the reality is,
0:10:14 and this is sort of, I don’t know,
0:10:17 disappointing, hurtful as the dad,
0:10:19 what you’re gonna find is with your sons,
0:10:22 they would draw a little bit or they’re just less inclined.
0:10:25 I have young men asking me for advice every goddamn day.
0:10:26 My boys don’t ask me for advice
0:10:29 ’cause they have this very healthy instinct
0:10:33 that says I need to break away from the pride.
0:10:35 And in order to make that a little less painful,
0:10:38 I start thinking my parents are idiots.
0:10:39 And what’s interesting is there’s research
0:10:41 that shows with teen boys,
0:10:44 they’re more apt to listen to their friends’ fathers
0:10:45 than their own fathers.
0:10:46 So what I would say is,
0:10:48 in addition to just doing the good work you’re doing
0:10:52 to get involved in groups where you might have an audience
0:10:54 of more young men or young people that you can influence,
0:10:56 whether it’s a church group,
0:10:58 or as I said, the Boy Scouts or volunteer groups
0:11:00 or coaching or sports leagues,
0:11:03 if you really feel like you have that ability
0:11:05 to connect with young men.
0:11:06 But also on a very basic level,
0:11:08 when you do stuff with your boys,
0:11:12 encourage them, ask them or just invite other boys
0:11:13 their age from your friends.
0:11:15 Especially, I think it’s doing God’s work
0:11:18 to kind of do a little bit of poking around
0:11:19 and find out where there’s single mothers
0:11:21 in your universe and say,
0:11:24 hey, I’m taking my kids to the football game
0:11:27 or I’m taking my kids to whatever it might be
0:11:30 to the beach, would John like to join us?
0:11:32 And I think you’re gonna find a lot of single mothers
0:11:36 are very open to their son spending more time
0:11:38 in the company of men trying to lead a good life
0:11:41 and around other boys, but thanks for the question.
0:11:44 We have one quick break before our final question.
0:11:45 Stay with us.
0:11:53 – Support for PropG comes from Quint.
0:11:54 Your wardrobe is the first thing you upgrade
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0:13:04 This episode is brought to you by Crescent Family Office.
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0:13:59 All investing involves risk,
0:14:01 including loss of principal.
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0:14:11 Listener, a new year is finally here.
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0:15:11 – Welcome back, question number three.
0:15:15 – Hi, Scott, this is Marcela Terra from Miami.
0:15:18 I am a Colombian immigrant and just when I thought
0:15:21 I couldn’t love any of your content anymore,
0:15:25 I find out you have bought a football team,
0:15:29 not soccer football from my beloved country, Colombia.
0:15:33 I was just curious what motivated you
0:15:35 to join this group that is making the purchase.
0:15:37 And if you have any plans to ace it,
0:15:40 my country, I’m just so excited.
0:15:43 Thank you so much for all your wonderful content
0:15:46 and keep up the good work.
0:15:48 In another non-football note,
0:15:52 just wanted to thank you for showing up vulnerable
0:15:56 and emotional and loving and caring
0:15:58 and also being a baller because I think
0:16:01 that’s your very own brand of healing the world
0:16:06 and helping young men know that those two things
0:16:09 can coexist by sky.
0:16:10 Thank you.
0:16:13 – I’m gonna print this out and read it to myself very night.
0:16:17 This is one, I oftentimes think my producers hate me
0:16:19 and are just so sick of me because I know me
0:16:20 and I know how difficult I can be.
0:16:21 Actually, I’m not difficult.
0:16:23 I don’t think I’m difficult, am I difficult?
0:16:26 But I’m shocked that they let this get through.
0:16:28 So thank you for the really kind words.
0:16:33 So la equidad, the number,
0:16:35 the second best team in Bogota, Colombia.
0:16:38 This is, I don’t wanna say it’s a dream of mine,
0:16:41 but I had always toyed with the idea of I really wanted
0:16:45 to buy or to make an investment in Rangers,
0:16:48 the best team in Scotland.
0:16:49 Because my dad used to go to Rangers games,
0:16:50 I absolutely love football.
0:16:54 I love the idea of investing in a community
0:16:55 and I think it would just be a lot of fun.
0:16:59 Also, quite frankly, it’s sort of a,
0:17:01 I don’t know, a symbol of your success,
0:17:03 midlife crisis, I’m worried I’m gonna die soon,
0:17:05 arrested out of lessons.
0:17:07 I mean, all of that less admirable shit too.
0:17:11 And I met, so how did this come about?
0:17:14 I met some, I met this guy at an investor conference
0:17:16 who’s sort of the Yoda or the Svangale
0:17:19 of investing in teams and he scans the world for teams
0:17:23 and he tries to find teams that are economically viable
0:17:26 because they have a great player academy
0:17:30 and cultivate and chest eight players and then sell them
0:17:34 or they have kind of unrealized or unlocked TV rights,
0:17:36 whatever it might be, or they’re just not a well run team.
0:17:39 This kid literally needs a kid who’s in his 30s,
0:17:41 scours the globe for opportunities.
0:17:42 And he came to me and said,
0:17:43 I’m putting together an investor group,
0:17:45 which includes people much more famous than me,
0:17:48 including Ryan Reynolds and Rob McAlhaney.
0:17:52 And I got to know Rob because of my work on “Young Man”
0:17:54 and I was in “Welcome to Rexmer,” I was in an episode
0:17:56 and I just was so impressed with this guy.
0:17:59 He’s just such a lovely, talented guy.
0:18:01 And when I saw they were part of the investor group
0:18:04 and it was also an opportunity to spend more time in Colombia,
0:18:07 which I just think is such an incredible country.
0:18:11 And also quite frankly, this is a bite size.
0:18:12 I’m not buying Chelsea.
0:18:14 Chelsea cost four or $5 billion.
0:18:15 I’m not in that weight class.
0:18:18 This is a company that went for dramatically,
0:18:21 dramatically smaller purchase amount.
0:18:23 And I’m also a small owner,
0:18:28 or I think I’m gonna own something like 5% of the team.
0:18:31 But anyways, this is one part investment.
0:18:34 I do believe, I think I’m gonna make money here.
0:18:34 Why?
0:18:35 The fastest growing demographic group
0:18:38 isn’t seniors or Latinos, it’s billionaires
0:18:40 and the super wealthy.
0:18:40 What does that mean?
0:18:42 It means the assets is super wealthy by,
0:18:46 whether it’s hotel rooms in Santropé or Gulf Streams
0:18:49 or Loro Piano or Brunella Cuccinelli
0:18:52 or sports teams are gonna go up in values.
0:18:55 Sports teams typically have sort of a natural monopoly.
0:19:00 And so kind of Columbia League One does not have only,
0:19:04 they sequester, we can’t just start a football team.
0:19:05 MLS rights in the United States
0:19:07 are going for several hundred million dollars now.
0:19:09 These are essentially regulated monopolies.
0:19:10 Is that a good thing?
0:19:13 Probably not, but I’m taking advantage of it.
0:19:14 So what do you have?
0:19:18 You have an explosion in the customer base,
0:19:20 specifically wealthy people who buy teams.
0:19:23 And two, you have limited supply.
0:19:25 I like my math here, I like my prospects.
0:19:29 Also, you have this dynamic in terms of media
0:19:32 where people can now avoid ads.
0:19:33 Advertising has become a tax
0:19:35 that the technologically illiterate
0:19:37 or the poor have to pay except for sports.
0:19:40 And that is the only time I ever see adverts,
0:19:41 is they call them here in Britain,
0:19:43 is when I’m watching Arsenal play.
0:19:45 And that is the only time I’ll endure ads
0:19:49 is when I’m watching live TV, which is almost never.
0:19:50 I never watch live news anymore.
0:19:53 I don’t watch, I watch original scripted dramas.
0:19:55 So I’m able to avoid almost every ad
0:19:56 except when I watch live sports,
0:19:59 meaning the TV contracts will go up in value
0:20:01 because advertisers still need to reach people
0:20:02 in their fewer and fewer places.
0:20:04 They can reach them, see above live sports,
0:20:06 which means the TV rights deals will go up,
0:20:09 which means the value, the teams will go up in concert
0:20:11 with the number of buyers,
0:20:14 specifically very wealthy people going up.
0:20:17 But I don’t wanna pretend this is also not consumption.
0:20:19 I just think this is gonna be just so much fun.
0:20:22 I can’t wait to take my boys.
0:20:23 I can’t wait to go with my friends.
0:20:25 I can’t wait to have an excuse
0:20:28 to spend more time in Medellin and Cartagena.
0:20:31 I just think it’s, I’m just so excited about this.
0:20:32 I love Latin American culture.
0:20:34 I love the idea of spending more time in Colombia.
0:20:37 I love the midlife crisis, midlife meat crisis.
0:20:39 I like the investor group.
0:20:40 So this was an easy one.
0:20:43 And it’s not, you know, this is a lot of money,
0:20:44 but it’s not hundreds of millions,
0:20:45 not even tens of millions.
0:20:49 It’s for someone like me who is incredibly blessed
0:20:51 and economically secure, but not a billionaire.
0:20:53 So what is this?
0:20:55 This is capitalism meets consumption.
0:20:58 I just think it’s gonna be so much fun.
0:21:01 So famous last words, but I’m really excited about this.
0:21:05 And maybe I will see you at a lot, equidad game.
0:21:08 Oh my gosh, that’s right.
0:21:10 He’s coming in, El Pato’s coming in.
0:21:13 Moyase color, Moyat.
0:21:15 – That’s all for this episode.
0:21:16 If you’d like to submit a question,
0:21:18 please email a voice recording
0:21:20 to officehours@profitmedia.com.
0:21:22 Again, that’s officehours@profitmedia.com.
0:21:25 (upbeat music)
0:21:28 (crickets chirping)
0:21:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:01 – Nice.
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0:00:35 – Hey, whatcha doing?
0:00:37 – Programming our thermostat to 17 degrees
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0:00:42 We’re taking control of our energy use this winter
0:00:45 with some easy energy saving tips I got from FortisBC.
0:00:47 – Ooh, conserve energy and save money?
0:00:49 Maybe to buy those matching winter jackets?
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0:01:01 Matching track suits?
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0:01:49 – If you’re enjoying our content, just a quick ask.
0:01:53 Please, right now, hit that subscribe button on YouTube
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0:01:58 in our dedicated Raging Moderates feed.
0:02:00 Jess has two young kids at home.
0:02:01 Be supportive.
0:02:02 – They have to go to college,
0:02:05 even though higher ed is such a disaster.
0:02:06 – Hit it now.
0:02:09 Please help us out and in exchange, we will do our best.
0:02:11 Maybe we won’t be as moderate as you like,
0:02:14 but we promise we’ll be very, very raging.
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0:02:16 – That’s right.
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0:02:24 – Welcome to Raging Moderates, I’m Scott Galloway.
0:02:25 – And I’m Jessica Tarland.
0:02:28 – Jess, this is the part of the show where we banter.
0:02:29 – I’m reading the same note.
0:02:31 What would you like to banter about?
0:02:33 – Well, let’s bring this back to me.
0:02:35 Show, ask me what I do this weekend.
0:02:36 – What did you do this weekend?
0:02:37 How fantastic was it?
0:02:38 – Well, Jess, I don’t like to talk about me
0:02:41 or my personal life, but on Saturday morning,
0:02:45 I had my 14 year old, just me and him.
0:02:46 And so I said, what do you wanna do?
0:02:48 And I knew it involves something in football.
0:02:51 So we jumped on the Euro star on Saturday morning.
0:02:52 – Which is lovely.
0:02:53 – Amazing.
0:02:54 – Yeah.
0:02:55 – It takes two hours and 20 minutes.
0:02:59 Pancras, or St. Pancras Station is about 10 minutes
0:03:02 from where we’re living.
0:03:05 Two hours and 20 minutes later, we’re at Garde de Nord,
0:03:07 which is I think train station of North or something
0:03:10 in French, just for those of you out there.
0:03:12 And then we’re at the hotel.
0:03:15 We went and had an amazing, my favorite,
0:03:19 or our favorite lunch, we had steak frites.
0:03:22 And then we went to the most amazing little stores,
0:03:25 mostly chocolatiers and crepe stores.
0:03:27 And then we went back and napped and went to the pool.
0:03:29 When you have a 14 year old, you gotta go to the pool.
0:03:30 I’ve learned that.
0:03:32 – That lasts until high school?
0:03:33 – Yeah, no.
0:03:34 – That they’re into going to the pool?
0:03:35 – You know, his only criteria for a hotel
0:03:36 is do they have a pool?
0:03:39 And we always go to the pool.
0:03:42 And then we went and then we had a dinner
0:03:45 at the most fabulous restaurant at the top
0:03:48 of this new fancy hotel called Cheval Blanc.
0:03:52 And we got dressed up and then we got dressed down
0:03:56 and we went to the PSG Paris Saint-Germain football
0:03:58 that’s the major team in Paris.
0:04:00 Oh, someone’s gonna say, “No, they’re not.”
0:04:03 Ty Renz, which was a big disappointment for PSG,
0:04:05 but we went and saw the football game,
0:04:08 came back next morning, woke up, had a lovely breakfast
0:04:12 and then went to Notre Dame, which is spectacular.
0:04:13 – Oh, it looks amazing.
0:04:16 – Spectacular and then caught the US star back,
0:04:18 I mean, 24 hours and just it was one of those
0:04:22 incredible weekends with my son.
0:04:23 What did you do?
0:04:25 – Well, I went to a three-year-old’s birthday party
0:04:26 on Saturday morning.
0:04:30 There was cake, funfetti flavor, which is my favorite.
0:04:31 So–
0:04:32 – Do they rent a place or is it one of those
0:04:33 where it’s rich people in Tribeca?
0:04:34 Do they have to rent a place?
0:04:37 – Well, I think both of those types classify as–
0:04:38 – Wealthy.
0:04:39 – Rich people, ’cause if you can rent a place
0:04:41 for your toddler’s birthday,
0:04:44 they did it at their building, actually.
0:04:47 So, and I don’t know what they earn,
0:04:50 so I can’t comment on that, but it was a lovely party.
0:04:52 And then Saturday night,
0:04:55 we went out to dinner with three other couples,
0:04:58 which was very lively, a lot of fun.
0:05:01 We’re trying out a new babysitter.
0:05:02 It seemed to go okay.
0:05:06 The toddler by the end said, “I liked new babysitter.”
0:05:09 So, great, but it was nice to go out.
0:05:12 You know how you usually are out with one other couple,
0:05:15 but being out with three other couples,
0:05:16 tons of conversations going on.
0:05:19 We had a nice time, but home by 9.30,
0:05:20 asleep by 10, the usual.
0:05:23 – So, four couples that usually gives everyone permission
0:05:24 to drink more is what I find.
0:05:25 And two–
0:05:28 – There was a lot of drinking and a discussion
0:05:30 about how one person thinks
0:05:32 that their partner drinks too much.
0:05:34 – It makes company, that’s nice.
0:05:37 – Yeah, I asked to be excluded from the conversation,
0:05:40 ’cause also I barely drink, I’m not.
0:05:43 I’m a lightweight, and I guess not that fun.
0:05:45 And so, I’m always very uncomfortable
0:05:46 with those conversations.
0:05:48 – Yeah, so I’ll give you a little bit of a heads up
0:05:50 on what’s coming your way.
0:05:53 In about seven to 10 years,
0:05:55 you’re gonna freak out about the fact
0:05:58 that you’ve spent so much time just raising kids,
0:05:59 and that you’re losing your youth,
0:06:01 and you and your female friends will start parting
0:06:04 like fucking rock stars diagnosed with ass cancer.
0:06:06 You’re gonna start drinking like crazy.
0:06:09 You’re gonna start doing girls trips all the time.
0:06:10 You’re gonna abuse alcohol,
0:06:11 you’re gonna experiment with drugs,
0:06:14 and you’re gonna make all the guys trips
0:06:18 that movies have been depicted on seem like a tea party.
0:06:21 They talk about the midlife crisis that men have.
0:06:24 I think men’s are longer, but less severe.
0:06:27 The midlife crisis for women happens earlier.
0:06:28 Specifically, I think when they leave
0:06:30 kind of their birthing years and they’re worried
0:06:34 they’re losing kind of their hot girl 20s and 30s,
0:06:36 and they go ape shit.
0:06:37 So anyways, you got that coming.
0:06:38 You got that coming.
0:06:40 Well, well, that sounds like fun,
0:06:42 ’cause I, yeah, I’m definitely not doing any of that.
0:06:42 No, none of that.
0:06:43 At this point.
0:06:45 Well, it’s hard, you know, what are you gonna do?
0:06:47 Every once in a while, I have a lot of good friends
0:06:48 because I–
0:06:50 You have a second glass of Chardonnay.
0:06:51 Is that when you–
0:06:54 No, I’m not, wait, I have one drink also.
0:06:54 What is your drink?
0:06:58 I only drink Tito’s grapefruit and soda.
0:06:59 You’re so fancy.
0:06:59 It’s like a modified Paloma.
0:07:01 So here’s another prediction.
0:07:02 I mean–
0:07:04 You’re gonna start getting unsolicited bottles of Tito’s.
0:07:07 When I started talking about how much I love Zacapa,
0:07:09 I’d show up to events and they’d have a bottle of Zacapa.
0:07:13 So everyone, Tito’s for the lady.
0:07:15 Good, good, all right, enough of that.
0:07:17 Grape banter, I loved it.
0:07:18 Yeah, that worked, check that box.
0:07:20 In today’s episode of Raging Moderates,
0:07:23 we’re discussing Trump’s whirlwind first week in office,
0:07:25 how Democrats are responding to Trump,
0:07:27 and what it really means to be a moderate
0:07:29 in today’s political climate.
0:07:31 Okay, so let’s bust right into it.
0:07:33 Donald Trump has hit the ground running
0:07:35 in his first week back in office,
0:07:38 signing nearly 50 executive orders and actions
0:07:41 that are already sort of reshaping politics in our country.
0:07:43 These include escalating immigration crackdowns
0:07:48 or deportation flights in a southern border troop surge,
0:07:49 as well as targeting birthright citizenship
0:07:51 and freezing asylum programs.
0:07:54 On Sunday, he also got into a feud
0:07:57 with the president of Colombia over deportation flights.
0:07:59 Meanwhile, he has halted foreign aid worldwide
0:08:01 and revoked security clearances
0:08:03 from former officials critical of him.
0:08:05 Add to that his controversial pardons of January 6th
0:08:08 defendants, the confirmation of cabinet appointments,
0:08:10 including Pete Hegset, despite numerous allegations
0:08:13 against him and threats to eliminate FEMA
0:08:15 while visiting disaster zones,
0:08:18 including Hurricane Helene’s wreckage in North Carolina
0:08:20 and wildfire ravaged California.
0:08:22 It’s a whirlwind start that is already redefining
0:08:24 how America Governs communicates
0:08:26 and is viewed globally.
0:08:31 Jess, there’s a lot to unpack here from Trump’s first week.
0:08:32 What stood out to you the most?
0:08:34 – That there is a lot.
0:08:36 That’s the point, right?
0:08:41 We’re so quickly back to where we left Trump 1.0,
0:08:45 which is I’m gonna throw everything at the wall
0:08:47 and just see what sticks.
0:08:51 And it feels as though we have a bunch of angry teens
0:08:52 that are in charge of the government, right?
0:08:55 Trying everything, pushing boundaries,
0:08:58 waiting for someone to slap them on the wrist to push back.
0:09:02 Maybe that comes from, you know, part of the internal caucus,
0:09:05 but we’ll talk about that later on
0:09:07 with some of the DEI initiatives that they scaled back,
0:09:10 but like waiting for the courts to come and get them,
0:09:13 you know, hoping that they just can skate through
0:09:15 with some of this stuff.
0:09:19 I feel there’s an overwhelming sense of manufactured chaos
0:09:23 to everything and that we are living in the midst of,
0:09:24 you would know better than me.
0:09:28 If it is, in fact, the biggest branding exercise in history,
0:09:30 but this golden age of America,
0:09:33 and he has lots of social media spots about it
0:09:37 out there on all of his channels,
0:09:40 it feels like he’s just going full steam ahead
0:09:45 with this social media driven approach to governance,
0:09:49 loyalty tests, everything that he left on the table
0:09:50 from the first time around,
0:09:53 he’s picking it up and doing it to the nth degree
0:09:55 if he can get away with it.
0:09:58 And he’s just calling our bluff, right?
0:10:01 Just saying, well, come and get me, right?
0:10:04 So that’s my feeling writ large
0:10:07 about what’s gone on so far, what about you?
0:10:09 – Yeah, I think that’s right.
0:10:12 It feels as if one, you could argue this is leadership
0:10:14 that he’s had kind of four years to prepare
0:10:17 for what he would do and just hitting the ground running
0:10:19 and has decided, okay, I’m gonna, you know,
0:10:21 promises made, promises kept,
0:10:24 and it’s going aggressively at everything he talked about
0:10:26 and moving, you know, their fleet of foot,
0:10:28 signing executive orders on the dais.
0:10:30 So you could argue it’s leadership.
0:10:32 I like what you said, the world’s largest branding event.
0:10:33 I hadn’t thought of it that way.
0:10:35 I think that’s really interesting.
0:10:38 At the same time, you sort of flooding the zone,
0:10:41 which is so much shit or actions
0:10:45 that wouldn’t have flown before.
0:10:47 And one of the things about our government,
0:10:48 the reason why we have three branches
0:10:51 is it’s meant to have this wonderful intransigence
0:10:53 where we sometimes to a fault,
0:10:56 wrestle stuff to the ground and really examine it.
0:10:58 And there’s just none of that now.
0:11:01 The, I would give more points to the Trump administration
0:11:03 than I would give to the Democratic party right now
0:11:05 who appears to be just caught flat footed.
0:11:07 In this mixed of, can you believe this shit?
0:11:08 We don’t know what to do.
0:11:11 And trying to sign up for this PBS Hallmark Channel
0:11:14 bullshit of we need to come together
0:11:16 and we need to cooperate with the president.
0:11:17 And they’re all trying to,
0:11:21 they’re all in such shock about this win.
0:11:24 And, you know, while it was a small number of votes,
0:11:26 so you went kind of seven for seven in swing states,
0:11:28 they’re all trying to pretend to be more moderate
0:11:30 and say, I’ll work with the president
0:11:32 and they don’t want to come right out of the box
0:11:33 shitposting them.
0:11:34 I think that’s a failed strategy.
0:11:35 I think they wanted war.
0:11:37 I think we should have it.
0:11:41 I’m not up for normalizing an insurrectionist and a rapist.
0:11:43 So I guess that doesn’t make me a moderate
0:11:44 because I won’t sign up to this.
0:11:45 – Great.
0:11:47 We’ll just end the podcast right now.
0:11:50 – But I would argue that there’s this,
0:11:54 we have this sort of notion it’s time to come together.
0:11:55 – I don’t agree.
0:11:58 I think Democrats and moderate Republicans
0:12:00 need to come to the rescue.
0:12:02 I think some of this stuff is just so over the line
0:12:06 and so un-American, you know,
0:12:10 rescinding the security detail of people who he doesn’t like.
0:12:14 – With live Iranian threats to their lives.
0:12:16 I mean, if you have Tom Cotton,
0:12:19 maybe the hero in all of this,
0:12:21 which is frightening to me, but.
0:12:24 – Well, he wants a security detail when he’s out of office.
0:12:26 – Well, he definitely wants one on January 6th.
0:12:28 Oh, no, it was Josh Hawley.
0:12:31 He was riding away like a little girl.
0:12:32 No offense to little girls.
0:12:34 Some of it is just petty.
0:12:37 Some of it is the revenge tour.
0:12:40 Some of it I do think is rooted in a genuine ideology,
0:12:42 but then it’s always taken one step further.
0:12:46 And I’ve been thinking about this notion of
0:12:50 what is the kernel of truth that gets us
0:12:52 to the crazy place that we’ve ended up, right?
0:12:55 Because a lot of what’s going on right now,
0:12:56 I believe is Democrats fault, right?
0:12:59 Like we walked into very specific traps.
0:13:02 And so we ended up with people telling us,
0:13:04 essentially I want a bloodless revolution, right?
0:13:07 I want the establishment so far away
0:13:09 that I can’t even see Nancy Pelosi.
0:13:11 All of this makes me sick.
0:13:14 And I would rather take a flyer on the chaos agent
0:13:19 than have someone who is routine and boring
0:13:23 and also is afraid to say things that are common sense.
0:13:25 Like the thing that’s right in front of you.
0:13:29 So if we look at with the DEI revolution
0:13:32 that’s going on now, that comes from, you know,
0:13:34 after the murder of George Floyd,
0:13:36 that companies just added, you know,
0:13:40 50 to 100 DEI employees or it was crazy.
0:13:44 I was looking at data from Loudoun County, Virginia.
0:13:47 They have a DEI office that they’re spending enough on it
0:13:50 that they could hire 125 new teachers
0:13:51 if they took that money and did that.
0:13:54 Obviously a parent in that district is going to say,
0:13:56 I would rather have new teachers
0:14:00 than have dozens of employees in the DEI office.
0:14:02 For instance, on the trans issue,
0:14:04 we talk about this regularly.
0:14:06 If you’re going to say that it’s fine for Leah Thomas
0:14:09 to compete at the collegiate level,
0:14:12 people are going to think that you are insane on trans issues
0:14:13 and then they’re going to pick someone
0:14:14 who’s going to over correct
0:14:17 and take away protections for trans people.
0:14:20 On immigration, if you’re going to say the border is secure,
0:14:22 people are going to look at you like you’re a lunatic,
0:14:25 especially once migrants are getting bust
0:14:27 to northeastern liberal cities
0:14:29 and they’re understanding the implications
0:14:31 of how El Paso taxes has been living.
0:14:32 And we’re going to have the overcorrection
0:14:35 and we’re going to see stuff like this.
0:14:39 Like, I don’t even want to call it a rise in deportations.
0:14:40 I find it fascinating,
0:14:42 and this goes to the social media presidency
0:14:45 or just who has the best branding exercise of this
0:14:47 because they’re out there saying,
0:14:48 promises made, promises kept.
0:14:53 We deported 310 undocumented people or illegals,
0:14:57 they would say, I would say undocumented because I’m polite.
0:15:00 And Biden was deporting,
0:15:02 sometimes it got over 400 people per day.
0:15:05 I think on average, he was at 310 per day,
0:15:07 but the Democrats never talked about anything
0:15:09 that they were doing.
0:15:11 And that’s the difference in this.
0:15:13 If you leave people in the dark
0:15:16 about what your administration is actually doing,
0:15:18 and I’m talking about the stuff that matters to them,
0:15:21 not the stuff that feels ancillary or for show,
0:15:24 they’re going to pick the other person.
0:15:26 And now people are running around saying,
0:15:28 oh, well, Donald Trump is the toughest on immigration.
0:15:30 No, actually Barack Obama was the toughest on immigration.
0:15:32 And we have been deporting a lot of people.
0:15:35 People don’t know that border crossings are down 55%
0:15:37 at the end of the Biden administration,
0:15:39 after obviously a huge surge in the beginning.
0:15:44 So we need a new digital strategist, that’s for sure,
0:15:46 the next time around that we do this.
0:15:51 And I don’t know, have you listened to any of Chris Hayes’
0:15:54 interviews about his new book about attention
0:15:56 and like the attention economy?
0:15:58 – Oh, that’s a new term, attention economy.
0:15:59 Let me think, I started using that
0:16:00 about 15 fucking years ago.
0:16:02 Anyways, what did Chris Hayes said?
0:16:03 He’s discovered the attention economy?
0:16:04 What does Chris have to say?
0:16:07 – No, he didn’t, no, he didn’t discover it,
0:16:11 but he’s talking about it in context of recent outcomes
0:16:15 and this race just to be the first person to say something
0:16:17 that someone sees on their phone
0:16:18 and how meaningful that is for that.
0:16:21 And I cannot think of an instance where Democrats
0:16:24 were the first people to be able to say something.
0:16:26 It’s always the Republicans and usually it’s Trump.
0:16:28 – Well, just starting there.
0:16:31 So first off, I would like to see
0:16:34 the, what committee would it be?
0:16:36 – We need immediately, in my opinion, to get,
0:16:41 probably not Musk,
0:16:43 because I think it would be too much of a spectacle
0:16:45 and just bring him more power.
0:16:48 It’s like one of those villains in a comic book
0:16:50 that the more you throw shit at him,
0:16:53 the more he absorbs it and becomes more powerful.
0:16:56 But the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
0:17:01 in my opinion have hearings in the tech industry’s
0:17:03 influence on democracy and its elections
0:17:06 because there, I think, is now emerging evidence
0:17:09 that basically Musk and Yacarino weaponized Twitter,
0:17:12 including creating thousands and thousands of accounts
0:17:17 to elevate misinformation and essentially spread
0:17:19 just a ton of propaganda misinformation
0:17:21 that had a real impact on the election.
0:17:22 I’m not sure it’s illegal.
0:17:23 It’s a private company.
0:17:25 He can do what he wants with it.
0:17:29 But I want her up there to under oath to say,
0:17:31 yeah, I knew that he was creating thousands of bots
0:17:33 pretending to be humans.
0:17:37 And we were elevating information or lies,
0:17:39 even though we knew they were lies,
0:17:42 such that it would influence the outcome of the election.
0:17:44 I just want her to go on record saying that
0:17:47 so Americans know what they’re dealing with.
0:17:50 And they have very effectively,
0:17:53 even if it’s Umberta Eco, the Italian philosopher said,
0:17:55 along the lines of the attention economy,
0:17:57 that it’s not what you’re famous for,
0:17:59 it’s just about being famous.
0:18:00 So say something incendiary,
0:18:02 and as long as you’re dominating the news cycle,
0:18:04 I mean, I feel like Republicans are dominating
0:18:06 90% of the news cycle right now.
0:18:09 And unfortunately, we have Senator Schumer,
0:18:11 who brightens up a room by leaving it,
0:18:14 just kind of doing nothing or saying nothing.
0:18:16 We have Speaker Emerita Pelosi,
0:18:21 who just purchased $50,000 to $100,000 worth of call options
0:18:23 on Tempest AI.
0:18:24 And when that was disclosed,
0:18:27 the company had its best one day performance in history
0:18:28 at 35%.
0:18:30 So she’s spending more time on Robinhood,
0:18:32 engaging what is effectively insider trading,
0:18:36 than actually paying attention to real issues.
0:18:39 You know, my question is, where the fuck are Democrats?
0:18:41 I don’t agree with a lot of AOC’s policies,
0:18:42 but at least she’s out there.
0:18:43 At least she’s trying to push back.
0:18:48 Where is Senator Klobuchar talking about,
0:18:51 you know, antitrust and competition and inflation,
0:18:53 and talking about how the tenure is surging,
0:18:56 and that these policies are incredibly inflationary.
0:19:00 We have, we’re literally fighting fire
0:19:01 with fucking squirt guns.
0:19:02 And when I say squirt guns,
0:19:06 I mean senior leadership in the Democratic Party
0:19:08 that is too old, too tame,
0:19:10 thinks they’re in a PBS drama,
0:19:11 where they, good sir,
0:19:14 and they like hit them with their glove.
0:19:15 I mean, enough already.
0:19:18 That this is insane that we don’t have,
0:19:20 I wanna see hearings on,
0:19:22 let’s immediately have a hearing
0:19:24 on this new crypto AI community.
0:19:27 And first thing is we need them to come,
0:19:29 this committee who organized by the president,
0:19:33 we should have the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing
0:19:37 investigate legal implications of Trump’s meme coins.
0:19:41 I want and bring the new head of this AI and crypto community
0:19:44 to explain the Trump and Melania coin.
0:19:46 Let’s have him go on the record and say,
0:19:49 what is this and is it good for the economy?
0:19:52 And we’ll be able to invite dozens of the 60,000 people
0:19:55 who bought this coin and are now off 70 or 80%
0:19:57 in about 72 hours.
0:19:58 Instead, we just sort of sit there
0:20:01 and give this bullshit, let’s time to come together.
0:20:04 There’s things we can work on together, work on together.
0:20:07 We had an immigration bill that the president basically
0:20:10 from Mar-a-Lago killed, so he could take credit for it.
0:20:12 And we’re all sitting around thinking,
0:20:14 it reminds me of the movie, “The Mission.”
0:20:16 I don’t know if you saw that movie
0:20:19 with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons.
0:20:21 But Jeremy Irons plays this,
0:20:23 I’m gonna call priest, a religious figure,
0:20:26 and the British are coming basically to slaughter
0:20:28 this indigenous community.
0:20:30 I don’t know if it’s Argentina or Brazilian.
0:20:32 They’re missionaries, anyways.
0:20:34 And the priest, Robert De Niro is trying to get everyone
0:20:37 they know they’re coming to prepare for war.
0:20:39 And the priest says, we’re about non-violence.
0:20:41 And they’re slaughtered, of course.
0:20:42 I just watched a movie called “24,”
0:20:44 which was about the most famous Norwegian spy
0:20:47 of all things, and a woman stands up,
0:20:48 as he’s speaking to this university, saying,
0:20:51 why didn’t you try non-violence?
0:20:54 I feel like the Democrats have decided to try non-violence.
0:20:58 And I’m like, sir, say, I choose violence.
0:20:58 This is not working.
0:21:00 Sitting around trying to pretend
0:21:01 we’re taking the higher ground
0:21:04 and we’re gonna work with the president.
0:21:06 It hasn’t worked, folks.
0:21:09 We need to be calling balls and strikes here
0:21:11 and saying that this is, when you have the president
0:21:13 saying things like polluting blood,
0:21:15 and then you have the person who, in my opinion,
0:21:18 weaponized a platform to get him elected,
0:21:20 telling the far-right party in Germany,
0:21:22 you shouldn’t dilute your culture.
0:21:24 I mean, this is pre-Hitler shit.
0:21:27 And yet, I don’t see a single Democrat
0:21:30 with anything resembling a following of social media
0:21:33 out there saying, fuck all.
0:21:36 So yeah, right now, as far as I can tell,
0:21:38 we have one party and another party
0:21:40 that thinks they’re at Catillion
0:21:42 training their kids to be polite
0:21:46 and that peace and love will win out.
0:21:47 Thank you for my TED talk.
0:21:49 Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:21:50 Stay with us.
0:21:54 It’s Today Explained.
0:21:57 I’m Noelle King with Miles Bryan.
0:21:59 Senior reporter and producer for the program, hello.
0:22:01 Hi, you went to public school, right, Miles?
0:22:03 Yes, go South High Tigers.
0:22:05 What do you remember about school lunch?
0:22:09 Oh, I remember sad lasagna, shrink-wrapped
0:22:10 in little containers.
0:22:11 I remember avoiding it.
0:22:13 Do you remember the nugs, the chicken nuggets?
0:22:17 Yeah, if I had to eat school lunch,
0:22:18 that was a pretty good option.
0:22:19 I actually liked them.
0:22:22 But in addition to being very tasty,
0:22:23 those nugs were very processed.
0:22:26 And at the moment, America has got processed foods
0:22:28 in its crosshairs.
0:22:30 It’s true, we are collectively very down
0:22:32 on processed food right now, none more so
0:22:35 than Health and Human Services’ secretary nominee,
0:22:37 Robert Fluoride Kennedy, Jr.
0:22:41 I’ll get processed food out of school lunch immediately.
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0:24:07 – So a couple of things.
0:24:10 Democrats said all the stuff that you just said
0:24:12 before the election for months
0:24:16 and voters turned up and said, “I don’t care.”
0:24:18 Right, so I care.
0:24:21 Millions of people do care,
0:24:23 but the pivotal number that seven million people
0:24:26 who voted for Biden in 2020 sat home in 2024.
0:24:29 That’s how little they cared about
0:24:30 what you’re just talking about.
0:24:32 AOC is out there.
0:24:34 She posted before the inauguration,
0:24:37 people are asking me why I’m not going to inauguration
0:24:41 and I’m not going to the inauguration of a rapist
0:24:42 to use the term that you use,
0:24:44 though I know there’s a legal conversation about that
0:24:46 and I’m not looking to have a defamation suit.
0:24:48 So AOC is saying stuff like that.
0:24:49 She was on John Stuart’s podcast,
0:24:52 talking a lot like you are just now.
0:24:55 But I feel like for someone like Hakeem Jeffries,
0:24:58 who is a very unifying leader,
0:25:03 he is trying to figure out as Nancy Pelosi had to for years,
0:25:06 how to manage a caucus that is being pulled
0:25:07 in many different directions
0:25:09 because the difference between what goes on
0:25:13 for a safe seat Democrat and a swing seat Democrat
0:25:14 is like night and day.
0:25:17 And we’re going to have Congressman Tom Swazi
0:25:19 on for an interview later in the week,
0:25:22 talk to him about this as he’s from a swing district
0:25:25 and he was one of the first people out there saying
0:25:27 these are the issues I’ll be able to compromise on.
0:25:29 We got to work together like the Lake and Riley Act
0:25:31 for immigration and I’m definitely looking forward
0:25:33 to pushing him about the parts of that bill
0:25:37 that are definitely not good, right?
0:25:40 In terms of not projecting dreamers and minors,
0:25:44 but obviously you can’t affect any change
0:25:45 if you’re not in office.
0:25:48 And if these people want to continue to be reelected,
0:25:51 so they can even make incremental progress,
0:25:54 they’re going to have to work with the other side
0:25:54 to some degree.
0:25:58 It’s something like 83% of the American public
0:26:01 wants the two sides to work together.
0:26:06 And that’s why I think going back to the executive orders
0:26:07 and kind of the beginnings of this,
0:26:11 like it is important to look at the list of things
0:26:16 and to say this is stuff that I kind of understand, right?
0:26:19 Like if you want to call it a national emergency
0:26:21 on the Southern border,
0:26:23 if you want to put more resources down there,
0:26:24 I can get on board with that.
0:26:25 I completely understand it.
0:26:27 All the people who live along the border would tell you
0:26:29 that’s exactly the kind of conditions
0:26:30 that they’re living in.
0:26:34 But the stuff that you have to figure out a way
0:26:36 to effectively hold the line,
0:26:40 not just rail about it or post about it.
0:26:43 He’s basically undoing the entire asylum system.
0:26:46 I was watching Tom Homan, he was being interviewed
0:26:49 about what happens now to all the people
0:26:52 who had their customs and border patrol appointments canceled
0:26:54 ’cause they got rid of the CBP One app.
0:26:56 And he said, well, go to a port of entry.
0:26:59 And the whole point was that you don’t want people
0:27:00 showing up at port of entries.
0:27:02 I mean, there are tens of thousands of people
0:27:04 who have been waiting in Mexico,
0:27:07 some upwards of a year to do this the legal way.
0:27:09 Also completely forgetting the fact
0:27:12 that people who are here illegally do have rights.
0:27:14 That is enshrined in our constitution
0:27:15 that they have a right to legal counsel,
0:27:18 that they have a right to do process.
0:27:20 And the DOJ has new directives.
0:27:24 This is one that I thought this can’t be real,
0:27:27 where they’re now telling legal service providers
0:27:30 who get federal funding not to do their jobs,
0:27:32 not to help these immigrants that are here
0:27:36 who might have a completely legitimate asylum claim.
0:27:40 I already mentioned the DEI offices
0:27:41 in the Fairfax County, sorry,
0:27:44 I said Loudoun County before it’s Fairfax County.
0:27:47 So that’s obviously bad, but then you sprint ahead.
0:27:50 Did you see this, that the Department of Defense,
0:27:52 ’cause they took down all of their DEI stuff,
0:27:55 removed promotional video material
0:27:56 about the Tuskegee Airmen.
0:27:58 – Yeah, and women in World War II.
0:28:01 – Yeah, the Wasps, which is such a great name for it.
0:28:04 And it was Katie Britt from the center from Alabama
0:28:07 who tweeted, “Oh, this must be a mistake.”
0:28:08 And within a couple of hours,
0:28:10 the new defense secretary, Pete Higgs,
0:28:12 was like, “I’ve fixed it.”
0:28:14 But that feels like one of those circumstances
0:28:16 where they were trying it on, right?
0:28:18 They thought, well, we could just go ahead
0:28:19 and get rid of these things.
0:28:23 And if someone catches us, so what, we’ll put it back up.
0:28:25 – And we’re in the news, as long as we can.
0:28:27 – Right, and we’re dominating the cycle no matter what,
0:28:31 because all news is good news
0:28:33 or all press is good press, I guess.
0:28:36 And that’s a credo that Trump has lived by forever.
0:28:39 There’s also just such a lack of expertise
0:28:41 and willingness to want to do the work, right?
0:28:44 They want to eliminate things en masse
0:28:46 and not spend the time going through
0:28:48 and actually looking at what the relevance is,
0:28:52 like purging the government of any of those checks.
0:28:54 They got rid of, I think, 17 inspector generals
0:28:57 over 12 huge bureaucracies, right?
0:29:00 These are things that used to piss off
0:29:02 storied members of the Senate, like Chuck Grassley,
0:29:04 lost his mind in 2021.
0:29:06 Trump got rid of two IGs.
0:29:08 Now 17 have been removed.
0:29:12 Did you see this communication freeze for the NIH and the CDC?
0:29:15 Like in the midst of bird flu,
0:29:18 they can’t tell people what’s going on with something.
0:29:20 Yeah, exactly.
0:29:24 And the foreign aid freeze is just totally frightening.
0:29:25 – Yeah, I’m a chairman of the World Health Organization.
0:29:28 To your point about sticking our chin out,
0:29:31 I believe Biden’s first executive order had to do
0:29:34 with transgender athletes’ rights,
0:29:35 and it took him three years
0:29:36 for an executive order on immigration.
0:29:39 – And to your point, illegal border crossings
0:29:43 had dropped to about 45,000 in December of 2024,
0:29:45 but in December of 2023,
0:29:46 a quarter of a million people came across
0:29:48 the border illegally.
0:29:53 What I find sort of ironic and telling about these,
0:29:54 I don’t know what the term is, roundups,
0:29:57 or when the ice shows up,
0:29:58 they’ve decided the most efficient place
0:30:02 to quote unquote find these unproductive people
0:30:03 who are freeloading.
0:30:05 Is it workplaces?
0:30:06 – Right.
0:30:08 – I thought, so if you wanted to deport Americans,
0:30:09 you’d probably go to McDonald’s
0:30:12 or to their basements where video games are,
0:30:15 but with undocumented workers,
0:30:18 you go to places of work ’cause that’s where they are.
0:30:20 I thought that was sort of ironic,
0:30:22 but we had this coming.
0:30:25 We ignored the problem, it got out of control,
0:30:28 and just as you can never actually visually spot
0:30:30 a pendulum at the middle,
0:30:32 they have swung, they have taken advantage of this
0:30:33 and they swung back.
0:30:35 And quite frankly, I don’t have a problem
0:30:38 with deportations of undocumented workers,
0:30:39 but let’s start with those who are in prison,
0:30:41 let’s start with those who’ve now committed two crimes,
0:30:44 one crime coming over here, legal, the second one.
0:30:47 I think that’s absolutely fair game.
0:30:50 The, I mean, some of the other issues
0:30:52 that we really screwed up on,
0:30:55 we talked about transgender, we took just a,
0:30:57 I don’t wanna say irrelevant,
0:30:59 but an issue and gave them just a free gift
0:31:01 would purchase for parents all over the nation
0:31:05 who don’t wanna have their daughters kind of run over.
0:31:08 The macro, the biggest issue, hands down in my opinion,
0:31:10 is that a mix of identity politics,
0:31:13 weaponization by special interest groups,
0:31:16 essentially had the Democrats implicitly
0:31:19 and explicitly turn their backs on the group
0:31:22 that has struggled the most the last 40 years.
0:31:25 Everybody feels when young people aren’t doing well.
0:31:28 Their parents, society,
0:31:29 and these are the people on social media saying,
0:31:32 okay, great invidious, we’re $3 trillion,
0:31:33 I can’t afford rent.
0:31:35 So instead of focusing on policies like inflation,
0:31:38 how to build more houses, bring down costs,
0:31:41 lower enrollment instead of being weaponized
0:31:43 by these universities that are,
0:31:46 I mean, essentially some of the most corrupt organizations
0:31:48 in the world are seen as the center
0:31:50 of democratic politics, specifically my industry.
0:31:54 What is more of an epicenter of kind of democratic ideals
0:31:56 than elite institutions
0:31:58 who I just interviewed the president Dartmouth.
0:32:02 They have an $8 billion endowment and they let in 500 kids.
0:32:03 – Okay, excuse me,
0:32:07 but you’re not this elite cast enforcer
0:32:10 talking about big, big fancy ideals,
0:32:12 but you don’t want to give people this drug
0:32:14 that decreases obesity, anxiety,
0:32:17 gives them a shot at getting married, making money.
0:32:20 No, you’d rather hoard it just for you and your elite friends.
0:32:23 So let’s create a misdirected DEI.
0:32:26 Michigan, University of Michigan has 200 DEI officers.
0:32:32 60% of Harvard’s freshman class identifies as non-white,
0:32:34 but we need to have DEI on campuses
0:32:35 such that we can discriminate against,
0:32:38 what, white kids and rural states?
0:32:40 I mean, it’s just, we got so out of control
0:32:43 with the identity politics, the DEI apparatus,
0:32:46 not focusing on inflation, not focusing on young people,
0:32:50 that we just gave them a layup to become sort of,
0:32:52 you know, just go overboard, flood the zone
0:32:54 with a ton of shit.
0:32:56 I get it, we deserve it, we had it coming.
0:32:58 What I’m really disappointed about
0:32:59 is why we’re all taking it
0:33:02 and calling on people to work together.
0:33:03 As far as I’m concerned,
0:33:07 it used to be about a certain level of mutual respect.
0:33:10 You know, Democrats and Republicans at the end of the day
0:33:12 thought, well, if they get in power,
0:33:14 I want them to show me some mutual respect.
0:33:16 It seems to me like we need to move to mutual destruction
0:33:20 and say, look, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Stephen Miller,
0:33:23 if you want to start revoking security details,
0:33:24 just be careful what you ask for,
0:33:26 ’cause once you’re out of office,
0:33:29 my guess is you’re gonna be real fond of a security detail.
0:33:31 You know, if you want,
0:33:33 I mean, if you want us to stick the DOJ on you
0:33:35 after our guy gets in office,
0:33:38 but right now we’re giving them the impression that
0:33:39 if you hit us, we’re Gandhi,
0:33:42 and we believe that peace is gonna work here,
0:33:44 and I think it’s to our disadvantage.
0:33:47 I think we come across as total wimps
0:33:50 and there’s no incentive for them to say,
0:33:52 well, maybe we shouldn’t be cutting
0:33:54 the security detail of General Milley,
0:33:57 in case our generals that we like are under threat
0:33:58 after they leave office.
0:33:59 I don’t think there’s any sense
0:34:03 that we’ll ever hit back, so to speak, your thoughts.
0:34:04 – Yeah, to back up your point,
0:34:08 that I think it’s crazy that we had his whole transition
0:34:12 knowing exactly who he is, what he’s going to do,
0:34:14 he’s telegraphing it every day,
0:34:19 and that we showed up on January 20th at inauguration
0:34:24 and did not have a solid message or a plan for countering this.
0:34:28 – The Democrats response post inauguration
0:34:33 or the complexion, for me, defines the term flat-footed.
0:34:36 Just on our heels, not even responding,
0:34:41 just kind of paralyzed, just incredibly encephaletic
0:34:44 and not counter punching at all.
0:34:48 It feels to me like in terms of the viscosity or strength
0:34:49 of the Democratic Party right now,
0:34:52 we have, I’ve never seen us this week.
0:34:53 – That’s a major declaration.
0:34:55 I don’t know if it’s necessarily wrong.
0:34:57 I think the right attitude,
0:34:59 like Congressman Golden’s team has said,
0:35:01 we’re not gonna respond to everything that Trump does
0:35:02 ’cause you can’t live in the midst
0:35:05 of an outrage cycle constantly.
0:35:08 But if we just take it on the chin constantly,
0:35:11 I could see voters showing up again in 2026
0:35:13 and just saying, well, what are you about?
0:35:15 I still have absolutely no idea.
0:35:17 So Huckin’ Jeffries really wants to focus in
0:35:18 on cost of living issues,
0:35:23 and the Republicans have put forward all these EOs,
0:35:26 they have a bill about banning transgender people
0:35:29 from athletics, but they don’t have a cost of living bill
0:35:31 and JD Vance was on with March Brennan over the weekend
0:35:33 and said, well, it takes time to bring prices down.
0:35:35 When they had told us it would happen on day one.
0:35:37 So I think you have to keep hammering that,
0:35:40 but you also need to have a personality
0:35:42 and be able to go on a long-form podcast
0:35:45 and chill with people and talk about other things
0:35:49 besides politics and I’m not seeing that
0:35:52 from that many key players in the Democratic party.
0:35:54 Most people, myself included,
0:35:57 thought Biden went too far with his preemptive pardons,
0:36:02 but he may be vindicated in that in the long term,
0:36:04 that these are ruthless people
0:36:07 who have said in public forums
0:36:10 that they’re going to come after these folks
0:36:12 and that that was actually the right thing to do.
0:36:14 I mean, that’s a Mitch McConnell move, right?
0:36:16 It’s not a traditional Joe Biden move
0:36:18 to go for the absolute worst case scenario.
0:36:23 So, you know, I hope that if Kashpatal gets confirmed
0:36:25 and it looks like he will,
0:36:27 because it looks like everybody will,
0:36:32 maybe not Tulsi, that he isn’t as punitive
0:36:38 and as motivated by retribution as he details in his book,
0:36:40 but who knows?
0:36:43 And I wanted to add to what you were saying
0:36:44 about young people.
0:36:48 I was talking to a friend of mine whose brother is 30 years
0:36:51 old, went on a bachelor party, 13 guys,
0:36:53 10 of 13 voted for Trump.
0:36:55 And these were all liberal-minded guys
0:36:58 that went to university together.
0:37:01 And what we were discussing that I found so interesting
0:37:03 and it links also to the discussion
0:37:05 about what’s going on with higher education
0:37:08 is that we just are seeing now amongst young people
0:37:11 a new definition of what sounds smart.
0:37:15 So, it used to be, you know, all of your degrees,
0:37:19 your level of credibility was directly connected
0:37:22 to how fancy the school you went to was, right?
0:37:25 Like what kind of job you had,
0:37:28 how that you knew which fork went with which, right?
0:37:30 Like going back to the pretty woman scene, right?
0:37:31 Slippery little suckers, right?
0:37:33 Like that that was what low-class looked like
0:37:35 and high-class looks like someone
0:37:38 who dedicates their life to public service,
0:37:40 but also has a trust fund that they’re relying on
0:37:42 and went to Harvard for everything.
0:37:45 And now the people that are revered
0:37:46 or that folks think are smart
0:37:50 are the ones who are asking questions incessantly.
0:37:52 And it doesn’t matter what they’re questioning.
0:37:55 Like RFK, well, I’m just asking questions, right?
0:37:58 About the measles vaccine or fluoride in the water
0:38:00 or whatever it is that day.
0:38:04 And the right has weaponized that against us
0:38:06 to an incredible advantage
0:38:10 because all of these young people who are smart
0:38:14 and very well-educated now think that it is cool
0:38:17 and forward-thinking and what they want to see in leadership
0:38:20 for people to not actually know the answers to questions.
0:38:23 And I don’t know how you rectify that
0:38:25 because, you know, I talked to my toddler
0:38:27 and she’s asking questions all the time, right?
0:38:29 Like, but why, mom?
0:38:30 Mommy, why?
0:38:30 Why do we do this?
0:38:32 Why are you going here?
0:38:33 Why do I have to brush my teeth?
0:38:35 Why do I have to make my bed?
0:38:38 And then you fast forward
0:38:41 to where she’ll be in 25, 30 years, let’s say.
0:38:43 Is she gonna think Joe Rogan is the smartest person
0:38:45 in the world because he’s just asking questions?
0:38:47 I mean, even Lex Friedman,
0:38:50 someone is a very traditionally smart person, right?
0:38:53 In terms of education and productivity
0:38:54 is just asking questions.
0:38:58 Like asking Zelinsky, why don’t you just give up your country?
0:39:00 And that’s what passes now
0:39:02 as the folks that we should be looking up to.
0:39:05 And that’s leading to a set of government officials
0:39:07 who are also doing that same thing
0:39:09 who are just flooding the zone with wild questions
0:39:12 that then leave them with this route
0:39:15 that they can go through to throw all of this
0:39:16 administrative shit at the wall.
0:39:19 And we’re ending up with a government
0:39:21 that I’m sure will be in complete crisis
0:39:22 in a matter of months.
0:39:26 – Yeah, it’s definitely, I mean, we say this a bunch
0:39:29 that we’re sort of in uncharted territory.
0:39:31 It seemed like I’m just, you said something
0:39:33 that sort of, I don’t know, piqued my interest
0:39:35 because you know more about this than I do,
0:39:39 but that you believe Kashpatel will be confirmed
0:39:42 and that there’s a chance that Tulsi Gabbard won’t be.
0:39:45 And I would have reversed that, but I don’t know the latest.
0:39:46 What’s going on there?
0:39:49 – What, well, what’s going on is, I mean,
0:39:50 you saw Pete Hegsas go through.
0:39:53 So there were three no votes on that.
0:39:56 It was quite clear that Senator Tillis did want
0:39:59 to vote against him ’cause he required Hegsas
0:40:02 to write a letter to him answering specific questions
0:40:06 about accusations of abuse against his second wife.
0:40:09 There was a big New York Times piece about this.
0:40:12 And you can see if an unjoney earns his face
0:40:13 that she didn’t want to do this.
0:40:15 But when you’re threatened with a primary
0:40:17 and probably with violence,
0:40:20 knowing how the internet works, you do those things.
0:40:22 The reason that I say that I think it’s possible,
0:40:23 Tulsi doesn’t get confirmed,
0:40:27 Lindsey Graham over the weekend wouldn’t answer, right?
0:40:29 And how he was voting on it.
0:40:32 And I feel like if there is anyone
0:40:33 who’s not gonna get through,
0:40:36 it’s the one that people are being the quietest about.
0:40:39 And no one really talks about Tulsi Gabbard.
0:40:42 They’re talking about the other ones.
0:40:46 I think it’s feasible that Republicans decide
0:40:48 that RFK Junior is not actually a threat
0:40:51 to vaccines or whatever and let him through.
0:40:54 But it seems like they’re advertising,
0:40:56 having good meetings with Cache Patel.
0:40:59 And I haven’t seen one thumbs up MAGA post
0:41:01 with people standing with Tulsi Gabbard.
0:41:05 So, but I’m prepared for all of it to get through.
0:41:09 – I love someone said that Mitch McConnell voting
0:41:11 against Hexath would be like Hannibal Lecter
0:41:13 going vegetarian on his death bed.
0:41:18 It’s just like, don’t hold your breath.
0:41:19 But yeah, it’s-
0:41:20 – You did it.
0:41:25 – Yeah, again, he’s got very little to lose at this point.
0:41:27 Right?
0:41:28 – Totally.
0:41:30 – He’s leaving his old, I mean-
0:41:32 – Profiles encourage though, right?
0:41:36 That you’re doing it and then nothing really to show for it.
0:41:40 But, you know, I guess I appreciate it anyway.
0:41:41 – But you think Cache Patel is gonna get through?
0:41:43 That’s super interesting.
0:41:46 – Right now, I don’t, you know, who knows,
0:41:51 but it looks likely and people seem to be thinking
0:41:56 that Donald Trump is entitled to whatever he wants
0:41:58 in terms of a cabinet.
0:42:01 And usually people do get what they want.
0:42:04 There have been cases where it hasn’t happened,
0:42:07 but they strong arm everyone.
0:42:09 And they have this fleet of people online
0:42:11 just threatening anyone who opposes them,
0:42:13 including, you know, members of their family
0:42:14 will do things like that,
0:42:17 whether that is a sitting elected representative
0:42:19 or the president of another country.
0:42:22 Like this game that went on with the Colombians
0:42:25 about using military planes
0:42:28 versus the regular detention planes.
0:42:30 I mean, first of all, it costs three times more.
0:42:35 They can get up to $852,000 to send back migrants
0:42:39 on these C-130s, I think, or C-17s.
0:42:40 – It’s all about branding, right?
0:42:43 – And so it’s like a huge, it’s all the show.
0:42:45 And CNN was reporting this morning
0:42:48 that they want all of the ICE agents
0:42:50 to be wearing their vests.
0:42:53 And for this to be made for TV,
0:42:54 ’cause we’re in the Truman Show,
0:42:55 but like a really bad version.
0:42:57 – Yeah, the one jet blue.
0:42:59 Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:42:59 Stay with us.
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0:44:16 (upbeat music)
0:44:20 – Welcome back.
0:44:22 Before we wrap, we gotta adjust something
0:44:23 we’ve been hearing from some of you.
0:44:26 Apparently there’s a feeling that we’re not quite living up
0:44:28 to the moderate in our show name.
0:44:30 Maybe we’re leaning a bit more into the raging side.
0:44:32 People say we’re more raging than moderate.
0:44:34 That’s a fair point.
0:44:37 So what does being a moderate really mean to us,
0:44:38 especially during this new administration?
0:44:40 Jess, you kick us off.
0:44:42 What do you think it means to be a moderate?
0:44:44 – Well, first, the fact that we’re talking about this
0:44:48 is your fault because you made me a comments monster.
0:44:51 And I went and looked at what people were saying
0:44:54 and there’s a lot of positive stuff.
0:44:54 But it–
0:44:56 – Oh, don’t look at the comments.
0:44:57 I mean, read the first five, learn from it
0:45:00 and then ignore it, just your own mental health.
0:45:03 – I stay up later than everyone in my household
0:45:05 so I could spend a good amount of time
0:45:07 comments doom scrolling.
0:45:10 But seeing a lot of this, like this is not
0:45:12 what a moderate means.
0:45:15 And I am completely willing to accept
0:45:17 that A, a moderate means different things
0:45:19 to different people.
0:45:24 And that also, I think of myself as a liberal moderate,
0:45:28 not someone who is a swing voter at this point.
0:45:31 And most people who advertise that are lying
0:45:33 ’cause there’s usually a crucial issue
0:45:35 that puts you into one camp or the other.
0:45:37 For a lot of people, it’s whether you’re pro-choice
0:45:39 or pro-life, and as a pro-choice person,
0:45:42 I would be hard-pressed to support
0:45:44 a candidate that was pro-life.
0:45:46 But I guess I wanted to talk about this
0:45:48 because I think what we share
0:45:53 and why we wanted to do this specific podcast together
0:45:57 under this name is because we wanna talk
0:46:00 about politics through the framework of pragmatism,
0:46:04 not just optimism or what we want to happen.
0:46:07 And that it’s important to have political discussions
0:46:10 that are cognizant of the guardrails
0:46:12 of the way government actually operates.
0:46:15 And also, I think most crucially,
0:46:18 understanding that the framework of a partisan worldview
0:46:21 is not how the general populace operates.
0:46:25 And the 2024 results were so indicative
0:46:27 of that transformation,
0:46:30 that people are not interested in backing a team
0:46:32 in the same way of anything they’re backing Trump
0:46:33 because they back that player, right?
0:46:35 Like that’s their favorite football player,
0:46:38 their favorite basketball player or whatever sport they’re into.
0:46:43 And I think that being a moderate right now is trying,
0:46:47 as per our earlier discussion,
0:46:50 to see the good in what the other side
0:46:52 may be bringing to the table and saying like,
0:46:54 “Sure, that works for me.”
0:46:57 And also I have constituents or I have people that I know
0:47:00 who absolutely feel that way,
0:47:04 recognizing the faults of the party that we both belong to
0:47:07 and then trying to find a way to constructively
0:47:12 and effectively push back where we need to.
0:47:15 And that’s how I see it right now.
0:47:17 I don’t, how do you see it?
0:47:19 Even though you said earlier, you’re not moderate.
0:47:21 So the podcast is over.
0:47:24 – I would define myself as kind of ground zero
0:47:25 for moderates.
0:47:26 And that is what, as far as I can tell moderates
0:47:29 are basically people that everybody hates.
0:47:34 And essentially, I mean, the generous
0:47:36 or the actual Webster definition would be someone
0:47:39 who has tempered views
0:47:42 and is somewhere in the middle on the political spectrum.
0:47:45 And the way I see it is I’ve tried as I’ve gotten older
0:47:48 to not be lazy and sign up for any political orthodoxy.
0:47:50 When I hear something crazy on the left,
0:47:54 I like to call it out when I think our democratic leadership
0:47:58 is too inefficient, feckless, cowardly, I call it out.
0:48:01 When I think DEI is out of control,
0:48:04 when I think that immigration is out of control,
0:48:07 when I think that social security spending is out of control,
0:48:10 you know, there’s some of their favorite policies
0:48:12 of the left, I call it out.
0:48:17 And when I am, you know, I’m vigorously pro-Israel.
0:48:19 It’s like, I don’t bark up any one tree.
0:48:20 I try to have my own views.
0:48:24 In this environment, based on where the political spectrum is,
0:48:25 I’m now seen as center left.
0:48:28 In the 70s, I would have been a Rockefeller Republican.
0:48:30 I just would have been, I would have,
0:48:32 I would have been in that party.
0:48:34 But I think it’s also just saying,
0:48:36 look, I’m gonna look at, I’m gonna be a critical thinker.
0:48:39 I’m gonna look at issue by issue.
0:48:41 And regardless of the political orthodoxy
0:48:42 you’re supposed to sign up to, you say,
0:48:44 okay, I’m not down with this.
0:48:47 And it’s almost like you become, unfortunately,
0:48:50 to a certain extent, the left is much harsher on moderates.
0:48:52 They treat you like an apostate.
0:48:54 Yeah, Scott, I thought we could trust you.
0:48:57 People from the Biden campaign, sign up.
0:48:59 Don’t you understand the assignment?
0:48:59 Sign up.
0:49:01 Well, no, he’s too fucking old.
0:49:03 What are we doing here?
0:49:05 And then people on the right are just like,
0:49:06 kind of write you off as a libtard.
0:49:09 But they don’t come after you the same way the left does
0:49:11 when they thought you were, quote unquote,
0:49:13 when we thought you were one of us.
0:49:17 So I see a moderate as someone who says,
0:49:19 okay, I’m gonna go issue by issue.
0:49:20 I’m gonna use critical thinking.
0:49:22 I’m gonna be unafraid to say this makes no sense,
0:49:26 regardless of the cult dynamics of pressure
0:49:29 to sign up for the full orthodoxy and narrative.
0:49:31 Because when the narrative gets crazy
0:49:35 or makes no fucking sense, you say, okay, I don’t buy this.
0:49:37 I don’t have a problem with deporting criminals.
0:49:39 I get the symbolism of it.
0:49:41 I don’t have a problem with a surge of troops
0:49:44 at the border, fine.
0:49:46 Deficits, anyways, my point is,
0:49:49 I’d like to think a moderate is someone who says,
0:49:50 I’m a critical thinker.
0:49:52 I’m gonna look at the issues
0:49:54 and I’m gonna decide one by one,
0:49:57 what I think is the right view on this.
0:50:00 I’m not gonna sign up and just say, okay,
0:50:03 I’m a fan, I’m a cultist, no matter what they say.
0:50:05 And this is true about the left and the right.
0:50:08 But I will say as someone who’s seen or identified
0:50:13 as a Democrat that I get more hate from the left
0:50:13 than I do from the right.
0:50:16 The right has just kind of written me off.
0:50:17 And that’s how it is in our society.
0:50:18 You gotta pick a side.
0:50:21 You can’t say, well, I wanna go issue by issue, right?
0:50:24 Do I believe women should have the right
0:50:25 to terminate a pregnancy?
0:50:26 Yes.
0:50:28 And the third trimester?
0:50:30 Okay, that’s worth a discussion, right?
0:50:35 If the woman’s health or the baby’s health is not in danger,
0:50:38 at the same time, nobody trusts each other.
0:50:41 So nobody wants to have anything resembling
0:50:45 kind of a moderate conversation.
0:50:49 In addition with Citizens United and gerrymandering
0:50:52 that has hard right and hard left districts,
0:50:54 there’s no political room for moderates anymore.
0:50:56 They can’t get elected, right?
0:50:58 Because basically every election now
0:51:00 with these hard blue and hard red districts
0:51:03 is decided in the primary.
0:51:05 So it’s basically who can be craziest.
0:51:07 Who can be more crazy left or who can be more crazy right?
0:51:10 And a moderate is just a recipe for not getting elected.
0:51:14 So I think in the media or as a commentator
0:51:16 or whatever you wanna call yourself a thought leader,
0:51:18 I think it’s especially important that we demonstrate.
0:51:20 It’s okay to be a critical thinker
0:51:23 and occasionally have your followers on threads
0:51:25 or blue sky come after you because you say,
0:51:28 yeah, I don’t get this democratic policy.
0:51:34 I think the vice president was a great senator.
0:51:36 I think she’d be a great Supreme Court justice.
0:51:39 I don’t know if she’d be a great president.
0:51:41 And then everyone comes for you.
0:51:45 And I’m not willing to sign up and blind,
0:51:49 bend the knee for C above an insurrectionist and a rapist.
0:51:51 – Critical thinking, look at every person,
0:51:53 look at every issue and decide where you are on it.
0:51:56 Because that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, Jess.
0:51:58 – No, I think that’s the right story.
0:52:01 And I think that there’s so much pressure
0:52:02 to always be a good soldier.
0:52:06 I certainly feel this in my role,
0:52:08 being part of the conservative media ecosystem,
0:52:13 that there are liberals who get enraged if I even say,
0:52:14 well, this doesn’t make a ton of sense.
0:52:19 Or this is an issue that 70% of Americans agree on.
0:52:21 Like, why can’t that just be our position?
0:52:24 It seems pretty normal.
0:52:29 Like, you know, the was a prop 36 on the California ballot,
0:52:33 making it not okay to shoplift up to $950
0:52:34 without getting arrested.
0:52:37 Like these are just obvious things.
0:52:40 And you should be able to have opinions about them
0:52:42 without people flipping out on you.
0:52:45 But I do think a critical component
0:52:48 of how we approach politics
0:52:53 and how people who are governing more in the middle do
0:52:55 is that they fundamentally understand
0:52:58 that it’s not the intentions that matter,
0:53:00 it’s the outcomes that matter.
0:53:03 And we just had an enormous outcomes election
0:53:07 where people said that governance in blue cities and states
0:53:12 is not meeting the moment, far from it.
0:53:16 That riding the subway is not a good option anymore.
0:53:18 That we don’t support law enforcement,
0:53:21 that we have people who are incompetent,
0:53:24 perhaps corrupt in big positions of power.
0:53:27 And that we are not living up to the covenant
0:53:31 that our elected officials make with the people
0:53:32 who send them there.
0:53:35 And that we’re actually failing ourselves
0:53:37 when it comes to our values
0:53:40 because of how poor that governance has gotten.
0:53:44 And that’s really crucial to how I think about politics
0:53:47 and how I think about my advocacy for policies
0:53:49 that I think will improve quality of life.
0:53:53 And more often than not, those policies are linked
0:53:58 to more liberal legislators or people who see the world
0:54:01 through a similar prism to me.
0:54:03 But I am completely open to the fact
0:54:05 that there are good representatives
0:54:07 from the other side of the aisle
0:54:10 that also live by those ideals
0:54:12 or certainly can meet us somewhere in the middle
0:54:13 to get something good done.
0:54:18 And I remember when the Democrats were funding MAGA candidates
0:54:21 to run against moderate Republicans.
0:54:26 And I understood it from a, we got a win perspective.
0:54:29 But it was upsetting to me
0:54:34 that good people like Peter Mayer in Michigan lost his seat
0:54:39 because we put in tons of money to back a crazy person
0:54:41 that would then go on to lose to the Democrat.
0:54:44 And I think that those are the kinds of things
0:54:45 that we need to explore
0:54:49 because we’re only gonna have a healthy political system
0:54:52 if we do have two thriving parties, right?
0:54:55 That are full of people that actually capture
0:54:58 the cultural and political zeitgeist of the country.
0:55:03 And the extremes on both sides are wildly dangerous.
0:55:07 And I think that the right more dangerous than the left.
0:55:10 But when you look at what people think
0:55:12 and how they’re talking about the issues,
0:55:14 you know that the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world
0:55:18 are not appealing to the general population writ large.
0:55:21 And that first sound like the Alonno Mars
0:55:22 or the Rashida Thalibs of the world
0:55:24 are not appealing to them either.
0:55:29 And so I think it’s important to be trying to stake out ground
0:55:31 to have these discussions about it to, you know,
0:55:34 bring people on from the other side of the aisle
0:55:37 or people who work regularly with Republicans
0:55:41 so that we can hear about how progress can actually be made
0:55:42 because they’re the ones,
0:55:44 we can talk all we want from our studios,
0:55:47 but they’re the ones actually casting the votes
0:55:50 for all of this and hopefully making a big difference
0:55:51 in people’s lives.
0:55:52 – Yeah, something I think the Republicans
0:55:54 have done much better than Democrats.
0:55:57 And your buddy Tim Miller, I thought made a great point on
0:56:01 from the Bollard podcast that they kind of the coarseness
0:56:06 and the, I don’t know, just the provocative,
0:56:09 sometimes stupid, sometimes weirdness
0:56:10 that’s come out of the right.
0:56:13 It came across as authentic, whereas Democrats,
0:56:15 it’s as if they’re reading off a press release
0:56:17 or believe that they’re crossing the Delaware
0:56:20 or giving an inauguration speech.
0:56:21 I mean, they’re just so like,
0:56:25 it’s like speak like a regular person for God’s sakes.
0:56:28 And the Republicans do that better than Democrats.
0:56:31 Also, it strikes me that a big component
0:56:33 in terms of what impacts people’s lives
0:56:38 and gives them the impression of the respective brands,
0:56:40 we have to get our shit together around on the ground,
0:56:44 running some of these Democratic cities.
0:56:49 A bunch of my friends lost houses in the Pacific Palisades.
0:56:50 And they basically all said the same thing.
0:56:53 They’re like, I keep hearing these excuses
0:56:54 where the reservoirs weren’t full,
0:56:56 the water pressure was down, whatever it is.
0:57:01 And he’s like, we pay 13% a year in additional taxes.
0:57:02 If I’m gonna have my house burned down,
0:57:05 I’ll move to Florida or Texas where I pay 0%.
0:57:09 It’s like, we should have the supersize gold-plated VIP,
0:57:15 a white glove government when you’re paying 13%.
0:57:17 And instead, some of the highest tax,
0:57:19 highest tax states are offering,
0:57:21 I mean, they’re expensive but bad,
0:57:23 which isn’t a recipe for a good product.
0:57:27 And the most expensive but bad metros right now
0:57:29 are governed by Democrats
0:57:31 who seem to be weaponized by unions
0:57:34 or whatever it might be, special interest groups
0:57:37 and are just taxing the shit out of their local residents
0:57:40 and doing head up your ass, you know,
0:57:42 enforcement like you’re talking about
0:57:45 where if you steal less than $900,
0:57:47 they don’t even prosecute you.
0:57:50 So I think until, and by the way,
0:57:51 I don’t think that’s true of New York.
0:57:53 New York has 12, I think it’s a total
0:57:56 of about 12 or 13% also in taxes.
0:57:58 But I would argue Manhattan is worth it.
0:58:02 I think it’s actually, I think Manhattan is well run.
0:58:05 And I don’t know about you, but I do feel,
0:58:09 I do feel that the subway feels a little bit different.
0:58:11 I’ve noticed that, I’m more aware.
0:58:13 – That’s an understatement.
0:58:15 – Yeah, you really feel it, don’t you?
0:58:17 – Well, I do personally,
0:58:20 but I don’t remember I grew up here
0:58:22 and have ridden the subway my whole life,
0:58:25 the number of people being like thrown in front of cars,
0:58:29 being punched, slashed, a woman burned on the F train.
0:58:33 That’s not normal.
0:58:35 Oh, things happen every once in a while.
0:58:36 – Agreed.
0:58:38 – And Cathy Hookle is definitely getting the message
0:58:42 because of Richie Torres, but it’s bad.
0:58:46 – Yeah, and also I just, in terms of crime, I think it’s-
0:58:48 – Well, crime is down, but those are also
0:58:50 to the point about the messaging of this.
0:58:54 No one, if they feel less safe and you come at them
0:58:57 with a bunch of statistics, it doesn’t matter.
0:58:58 – If I don’t feel safe on the subway,
0:59:00 if I can’t have my AirPods in,
0:59:03 ’cause I need to, I have to feel like I’m more aware.
0:59:05 All right, that’s all for this episode, Jess.
0:59:07 Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.
0:59:10 Our producers are David Toledo and Chenenye Onike,
0:59:12 our technical director is Drew Burroughs.
0:59:14 You can find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday.
0:59:17 – That’s right, Raging Moderates on its own feed.
0:59:20 Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
0:59:22 Jess, have a great rest of the week.
0:59:23 – You too, Scott.
0:59:24 – Thank you.
0:59:26 (upbeat music)