0:00:18 I’m Guy Kawasaki, happy 2024, welcome to Remarkable People, we’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:25 Today we have the privilege of hosting Halim Flowers, he’s a man whose life journey is
0:00:34 nothing short of a testament to resilience and transformation. In 1997, at the age of 16,
0:00:41 Halim was charged as an adult in the District of Columbia and convicted under the accomplice
0:00:48 liability doctrine of felony murder. He was sentenced to a staggering 40 years to life
0:00:56 imprisonment. His turbulent childhood, documented in the Emmy award-winning Thug Life in D.C.,
0:01:03 exposed the harsh realities of growing up within the walls of the D.C. Department of Corrections
0:01:10 during the crack era. During his incarceration, Halim discovered a profound love for literature
0:01:16 and the arts, and he transitioned learning entrepreneurship from the streets at the age
0:01:24 of 12, that is, dealing drugs. Halim channeled that ambition into self-enterprise and published
0:01:33 11 books across various genres. Released in 2019 after serving 22 years and two months,
0:01:39 Halim has since collaborated with Kim Kardashian on the Justice Project, performed spoken word
0:01:46 with Kanye West, and earned fellowships from the Halcyon Arts Lab and Echoing Green. His
0:01:53 story, captured in the memoir, Making of a Menace, Contrition of a Man, is a poignant
0:02:00 narrative of transformation and offers insights into the devastating and inspiring journey
0:02:07 that he has led. During our interview, I jokingly asked him to make a painting about my book,
0:02:13 Remarkable, and lo and behold the next day he told me he did it. A picture of Halim and
0:02:20 the painting is in the book. Actually, there are two pictures of the painting, if you count
0:02:26 the one on the dust jacket, which is in color, which truly shows you what it looks like.
0:02:35 I’m Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now here is the truly Remarkable Halim
0:02:48 Flowers. Our house has two paintings of Jean-Michel Basquat, of Jean-Michel Basquat, not by Jean-Michel
0:02:57 Basquat, and I read that he was an inspiration and paved the way for you. For me, my life
0:03:07 has definitely been impacted by Sean Carter, Jay-Z, and had it not been for my deep listening
0:03:13 to Jay-Z, his music, I’m not gonna say I wouldn’t have never been introduced to Basquat because
0:03:22 he’s so popular now, but when I was in prison and my access to the world was limited, it
0:03:29 was through listening to Jay-Z that I was introduced to Basquat, and then my habit of
0:03:36 reading the Wall Street Journal every day introduced me to not Jean-Michel Basquat work, just a
0:03:42 brief description about his life, and it encouraged me to want to see his work because
0:03:51 he looked like me, and I never thought that the fine art world found anyone who looked
0:04:00 like him to be Remarkable and celebrated, so that was what piqued my interest, and then
0:04:06 just seeing having the opportunity to come out of prison, to see his work in person,
0:04:13 and learning that both of us shared backgrounds as poets who started painting. His work always
0:04:20 spoke to me not because he was popular, it was just because the words that he used and
0:04:26 the way his imagery was just so raw and authentic, and it wasn’t like curated and edited as we
0:04:31 just spoke about earlier, it was just authentic. More not his life, but his work, because his
0:04:36 life was a tragedy, and his life was an inspiration to me, the only thing that was inspirational
0:04:42 to me about his life was his work ethic, the pace at which he worked and him having the
0:04:49 audacity to be in a space that normally would not include people who look like him. I am
0:04:56 an entrepreneur and I am the business, but I’m just confident in who I am in a humble
0:05:02 way, whereas I don’t, I’ve never felt the need to be like, you know, like I needed to
0:05:08 be like edited or I’m just, I just want people to know me, and I’m not afraid for people
0:05:15 to know all of me, the parts they enjoy and love, and the parts they may not. And for
0:05:20 me it’s just like being committed to growth and understanding that the biggest room in
0:05:25 the world is a room for improvement. So I think that’s very harmful today that we live
0:05:32 in this Photoshop edited world, it doesn’t give people grace to make things that people
0:05:37 interpret to be mistakes, but that are well-intentioned. We’re not talking about like going out and
0:05:42 harming someone, but people can say something and people trance on them, and they don’t
0:05:49 give them grace to grow, and it just keeps people just rigid and tight. So for me, I’m
0:05:56 just, I’m thankful to be an artist that people enjoy my art, I’ll just show up authentic.
0:06:02 Maybe my mind is making a connection that doesn’t exist. Do you pronounce your organization
0:06:15 Seito or Sato? Sato. Sato sounds like Japanese. Is Sato, is that inspired by Samo, S-A-M-O?
0:06:24 No, Sato was actually a publishing company that I started in prison in 2005, far before
0:06:30 I learned about Jean-Michel Basquiat and Samo, and Sato is an acronym that stands for
0:06:36 struggle against the odds. So when I started the publishing company, I had two life sentences.
0:06:45 I was like maybe 24 years of age, I was incarcerated, and I had so much to say, and I didn’t have
0:06:51 a lot of avenues to say it. I didn’t have access to social media or the internet, but
0:06:57 I knew that I had a story that I felt was remarkable and that it needed to be heard
0:07:05 outside of me just filing an appellate litigation to the appeal courts in my case to redress
0:07:11 the legal travesty that I was experiencing as a juvenile lifer. So for me, I knew that
0:07:16 it would be a struggle against the odds to get noticed in the publishing world, so just
0:07:22 me having the audacity with no experience in the literary world to start my own publishing
0:07:28 company and to believe that I had something to say that people with value was a struggle
0:07:34 against the odds, but I made it. Sure. If there’s a story in our 200 episodes of someone
0:07:41 who struggled and succeeded against the odds, Halim, you are near the top, I assure you.
0:07:49 And just one last thing about Jean-Michel, just in case you decide to paint a skull,
0:07:55 just let me know in advance so I can buy it. Okay. I would definitely do, I will, because
0:08:05 I just revisited a new descent in a staircase, which was originally done by Marcel Duchamp.
0:08:11 So I’d like to take a repurposed Francis Bacon hair series, so I will repurpose the
0:08:19 skull for you and just for you. I only do one and I’ll never do it again because I think
0:08:28 what happens by me being socially constructed as black, people negatively critique me for
0:08:36 honoring Basquiat. So if I repurpose a famous Picasso painting versus a famous Basquiat
0:08:43 painting, I will be more celebrated for the Picasso than the Basquiat, because people
0:08:48 in there for a night understand and think that I’m copying him, but that’s not even
0:08:53 there to me. For me, I just paint what I feel, but I’m just explaining to you what I’ve
0:08:59 experienced in my three year journey in this fine art world.
0:09:06 You returned to the steam several times about the impact of your father not really having
0:09:13 a big presence when you were a kid. And we’ve interviewed several people who said the exact
0:09:21 same thing. Can you just talk about what it means to grow up in DC without a father figure?
0:09:29 For me, I definitely want to clarify that because my dad was married to my mom and I had my
0:09:38 dad in my home until he got addicted to crack cocaine. And so my formidable years of one
0:09:46 through six, I had my dad day for day. My dad, the things that make me successful and
0:09:53 I believe in life today were things that my dad instilled in me, exercise, education,
0:10:00 discipline, things that he didn’t have. And now that I’m looking at him now as he’s 65
0:10:07 and I’m 43, I realized that he saw all the weaknesses in himself and he strengthened himself
0:10:14 through me. But when I lost him to the addiction, he was no longer himself. And then eventually
0:10:19 he moved away to the West Coast to try to get himself together. And he moved from DC
0:10:24 to Las Vegas. And by the time that he had came back, I was doing life in prison at the
0:10:33 age of 16, but not having him in my life from the ages of seven to 12. It really damaged
0:10:38 me because I was able to keep up the structure that he gave me as far as the spirituality
0:10:44 and the amateur boxing and the exercising and the schooling until I was 11. But once
0:10:50 I turned 12 and went to middle school, the peer influence was, it was so dominant on
0:10:56 my psyche. And I wanted to be accepted by my peers so much and not having my dad in
0:11:02 the home to counterbalance that because by him being absent, my mom had to work and go
0:11:08 to school after work so she can increase her ability to earn more to take care of my little
0:11:15 brother. And she wasn’t there. And then he wasn’t there at all. I leaned more to the
0:11:22 teenager guys in the streets and that created a vacuum that sucked me into the human waste
0:11:27 disposal of the school to prison pipeline to the prison industrial complex.
0:11:33 What is your advice? I know you wrote a book like this. What is your advice to kids who
0:11:41 don’t have fathers or don’t have father figures? I just spoke at a school earlier today and
0:11:48 I told them that if they didn’t remember anything that I said that they had value, that life
0:11:56 had value, their presence had value. And because they looked at me as if I was somebody famous
0:12:02 or something. And I told them I’m no different than you, that you have to find value in yourself
0:12:08 and not in things. It’s hard to understand at this time because who wants to be different
0:12:13 when you’re a teenager? Who wants to stand out? Who doesn’t want to be trendy in the
0:12:21 age of social media where so much is driven by filtered images and what’s popular and
0:12:28 trending at the time. But the value is in yourself. And if you celebrate me, understand
0:12:35 that I’ve only been able to be what you consider to be a success or remarkable just through
0:12:40 leaning into my authentic self and not editing in myself and not photoshopping myself, but
0:12:47 just speaking what I feel, painting what I feel and doing it all from a loving intention.
0:12:53 And that’s my advice I would give to any child or adult that your genuine self, as Mr.
0:13:00 Roger said, you’ll find just the way you are and your genuine self has value. And you have
0:13:06 to understand the value of yourself before you start looking at celebrating people in
0:13:11 this modern time where everything is driven by net worth. And understanding that net worth
0:13:16 is just somebody’s opinion about things that somebody created to be assets, whether it’s
0:13:22 paintings or real estate or whatever. But if you don’t properly value yourself, you will
0:13:30 always find yourself chasing the approval of others. And you will be a slave to the appraisal
0:13:37 that others give to the value of yourself, not even your things yourself. And I think
0:13:43 that’s the worst prison to ever be in in the world when your authentic self is incarcerated
0:13:50 because you choose to suffocate it just to be approved by the opinions of your peers.
0:13:57 Maybe we could back up a little and listen, I know you must be sick of explaining this,
0:14:03 just like I’m sick of explaining what it was like to work for Steve Jobs. But can you just
0:14:12 briefly explain how it came to be that at 16, you were sentenced to two 40 year terms
0:14:18 for a murder. And then your friend who actually did the murder, his case was dismissed, but
0:14:22 your case continued on. Could you just review that for us?
0:14:30 Yeah, and in the United States of America, we have some of the most unique laws in relation
0:14:36 to like conspiracy and accomplished liability doctrine, as it’s known in the legal jargon
0:14:44 world. And in America under the felony murder law, as it stands today in the District of
0:14:51 Columbia, thank God, California recently changed their law. If you are found, if you are present
0:14:57 during the commission of a felony that leads to a murder, whether you had the intent to
0:15:03 harm or not, long as you committed a felony and a murder happened in furtherance of a
0:15:09 felony, then you are just as guilty as the principle, whether you had an attempt to
0:15:17 harm or not. In my case, I wasn’t even present when the murder happened. But my the person
0:15:22 who was charged as being the actual principal in the shooting, he couldn’t come testify
0:15:28 about that, because they would charge him. And he was charged. And of course, he don’t
0:15:35 want to admit to something. And I told without my side of the truth, but I my refusal to
0:15:43 implicate him in my story or in my alibi caused the government to come down hard on me because
0:15:49 they wanted me to implicate him in my thing in life back then, even as a 16 year old child
0:15:55 and as a 43 year old adult today, I do not believe in wheezing and out of consequences
0:16:02 for one’s decisions, just to save oneself. I chose to at the age of 11, I took my pre
0:16:08 SATs, and I was taking courses at Howard University when I was 11. When I was 12, I chose to
0:16:15 sell drugs and stop going to school. So once I made that decision through being affiliated
0:16:22 with people who I chose to hang with, I put myself in a position to be accused of things
0:16:29 like that. And I’m not the type of individual that when it comes time to be held accountable
0:16:35 for your decisions, that I’m just going to implicate someone else just to get off. So
0:16:41 for me, I told the truth about my part and what happened in the incident. Yeah, I was
0:16:47 a part of a robbery that happened before the shooting that I did myself. I did that myself
0:16:54 and I left. Somebody else came back afterwards and shot the guy. I didn’t tell anybody to
0:17:00 do it and I wasn’t present when it was done. But one of the witnesses said that I wasn’t
0:17:06 there and one said that I was. And it was my word against theirs. I went to trial and
0:17:12 I was willing to appeal my case, no matter how long it took me, even if I would have
0:17:17 died in prison at the age of 90 years old, I would have stood by what I did and what
0:17:21 I should have been held accountable for. And for my case to not even be charged with being
0:17:28 a shooter and to have the government after they convicted me as an aided and a better
0:17:34 to just dismiss the case against the shooter. It just shows how they value my life and how
0:17:40 they value my presence. And even to this day, everyone who was released under the law that
0:17:45 I was released under, all of them have been taken off a probation. I’m the only one that’s
0:17:52 still on probation. And the judge and the prosecutors told me that no matter, it doesn’t
0:17:58 matter that I’ve done art for the Queen of England and done all the community work I’ve
0:18:03 done through my creativity and my presence in the community. They said I’m still a minister
0:18:09 society and that I had to complete my full five years of probation, irregardless of what
0:18:14 has been done for everybody else that’s been released except me. I don’t know what it is.
0:18:20 I don’t know why it happens that way with me. I believe in the law of attraction and
0:18:27 I believe that things happen for a reason and I don’t express any bitterness or any
0:18:33 anger. I just accept what is and no matter what happens, whether I agree with it or not,
0:18:38 I have to maintain a love and attention and a positive attitude no matter what because
0:18:44 anything else is just going to lead to a bitterness that’s going to eat me alive as a cancer when
0:19:06 I don’t want any toxicity in my emotional ecosystem.
0:19:10 Just so the people listening to this understand what you’re talking about, we’re talking
0:19:17 about a 22 year old sentence. I mean, you were in prison for 22 years because you chose
0:19:24 to take this path. So I don’t know how you can’t be bitter about it and all that. That’s
0:19:30 a remarkable thing too. Now, just so people understand, so you got out because there’s
0:19:36 this thing called the incarceration reduction amendment act, which basically says if you
0:19:42 were incarcerated when you were young and you served, I don’t know, 15 years that at
0:19:48 the discretion of somebody, they could let you out. And is that accurate? That’s how
0:19:49 you got out?
0:19:56 Yeah, the law was a large part of the law being passed was because of me. I don’t want
0:20:04 to say it from an egotistical perspective, but I had been researching the issue for 13
0:20:10 years before the law was passed. And I had been in communication with individuals within
0:20:17 the DC City Council activists and nonprofit organizations about introducing this legislation
0:20:24 based upon neuroscientific information about the lack of development of the prefrontal cortex
0:20:31 in young boys. And in some recent US Supreme Court cases in relation to that information
0:20:37 in relation to the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment in relation
0:20:42 to the children under the age of 18. But it wasn’t like I don’t want people to listen
0:20:49 to feel like the law passed like no, this was something that I fought for over a decade.
0:20:55 And we were able to get it passed. And this DC City Council and the local organizations
0:21:03 that were involved in the legislative enactment, they use me as a postal child. And I think
0:21:09 that’s why the government wants me to still be on probation because it’s industries that
0:21:17 profit off of people staying in prison. And it’s industries that suffer when people are
0:21:22 released in prison that were planned to be in prison for the remainder of their lives.
0:21:27 And whoever, whatever interest those people being in prison, of course, they wouldn’t
0:21:31 like somebody like me. I understand that because I’m against the economic interest. I don’t
0:21:36 take it personal. But that was the law that was passed. And it was definitely something
0:21:42 that I fought for personally in research for over a decade. And then through the grace
0:21:47 of the universe, things were able to get changed in my favor.
0:21:56 Under that same law, apparently about 60 other people were released. Do you know if none
0:22:01 of them went back to prison, they all turned their lives around? What has been the result
0:22:06 of those 60 people? Not all of them became world famous artists like you, obviously.
0:22:14 A one or two percent recidivism rate. I know maybe because now the law has been expanded
0:22:19 instead of the 18 has been extended to the age of 25 known as the Second Amendment Act.
0:22:25 And we were able to get that passed once, once we got released. But out of the 60 guys,
0:22:30 I know maybe two. I know personally that went back. But now hundreds of people have been
0:22:36 released. And it hasn’t been any sensationalized crime that’s been committed by someone who
0:22:41 was released, something where the government can take it and be like, see, we shouldn’t
0:22:46 have let them out. But more than all of us are like business owners, homeowners, grassroots
0:22:54 activists, Murray, dads, we children now we starting to get guts, dad buys and we got
0:22:59 our passports and we we see in the world. And like you say, people may not be artists,
0:23:04 but some people are doing community violence interruption work to really disrupt some of
0:23:10 this gun violence. Like I lost one of my close brothers, one of my close friends, Saturday.
0:23:15 He was shot 41 times. He came and picked me up from the airport, dropped me off in two
0:23:21 hours late. He was shot 41 times. So we have a problems with gun violence in America and
0:23:27 this I don’t want people just to see successes like someone who’s come home and my case might
0:23:32 be like more like an outlier where you able to do these things. But there’s other people
0:23:37 who just do things that don’t receive media attention. But I find them to be successful
0:23:43 because we have a gun violence pandemic in America that’s far exceeded what it was when
0:23:50 I was a child when it was just relegated to people in the inner city now was cutting across
0:23:57 all social economic stratifications. You already touched on this because we did a law change
0:24:06 from 18 to 25. And you talked about the pre-cortal caught pre frontal cortex. If you can take
0:24:14 yourself back, you saw Bootsy and you saw a chip die. So you know, if you see your friends
0:24:21 die like that and your father is addicted to crack, what goes through your mind? You thought
0:24:26 I’ll be the exception. I can be the successful dealer. I’ll never get caught. I’ll never
0:24:32 get shot. Or do you even did you even think like that? What the hell am I doing? My friends
0:24:38 are getting killed. I think it’s I don’t say I think I know when you live in a when you’re
0:24:44 born in a situation and raised in a situation where you see people just being murdered as
0:24:51 children, you want to escape it. And for me, even at a young age, I understood my mom doesn’t
0:24:57 have the money to move. I have to do what I have to do now. Yeah, I’m gifted and tired
0:25:05 and I’m taking collegiate courses at 11. But I might not make it to college. And at that
0:25:11 time, I didn’t have friends like I do now who are venture capitalists, private equity
0:25:17 has fun people to tell them like, look, hey, put together idea, put it in a pitch deck
0:25:22 format, come on out here to Silicon Valley, put it together, get some startup capital
0:25:28 series, a series, B series, C series, I didn’t have those type of people in my community.
0:25:33 And they don’t exist in the community now. But you talking about the time we didn’t even
0:25:38 have the internet back then. All I saw was drug dealers. I would have sold cookies if
0:25:44 cookies was profitable. I would have sold anything because I can sell and I enjoy sales
0:25:49 mischief. And I never really wanted to work a job. But if I could have worked a job at
0:25:53 the age of 12, they could have if I could have worked for Steve Jobs, I would have worked
0:25:58 for Steve Jobs and I would have worked harder than anybody smarter than anybody. And I damn
0:26:03 there probably wouldn’t end up side by side with Steve Jobs. Once I had the opportunity
0:26:09 to thrive, but I just didn’t have the opportunity. So my frame of reference was limited to mothers
0:26:17 like my mom who was struggling with wage labor and drug dealers who were thriving economically,
0:26:23 you know, and they had all the remnants of it. And my undeveloped, undeveloped brain
0:26:30 couldn’t foresee all of the negative consequences that came with selling drugs, even though
0:26:38 I lost my dad to it and so many other people, but that desire to make it to get some money
0:26:44 to get out of that neighborhood, that level of desperation, it supersedes any reasoning
0:26:50 or rational thinking. I’m just desperate and I’m only working with what I have as a 12
0:26:56 year old. So how can the cycle be broken? I recently had an opportunity to listen to
0:27:03 an interview by Van Jones. And he was speaking about how he went to an event in Sun Valley,
0:27:08 Idaho, and a lady who’s considered the mayor of Sun Valley introducing the Jeff Bezos.
0:27:14 And through that introduction, Jeff Bezos gave him $100 million to invest in this rough
0:27:22 and mass incarceration of the African American social economic ailments that have been perpetuated
0:27:28 intergenerational in our communities. But even Van Jones admitted that all his life he’s
0:27:34 been an employee. He knows nothing about finance, investing, entrepreneurship. And I think to
0:27:39 break that cycle, you got to give people like me a hundred million. You got to give people
0:27:44 who know how to make something out of nothing to be able to invest that back. I don’t need
0:27:51 none of the money. But it’s people like me who have made it the JZs and the other people
0:27:55 who come from nothing, who couldn’t shoot a basketball and stuff like that, but could
0:28:01 tell a story, whether it’s through their music or through their art. And then they extended
0:28:06 the fashion and then it goes all the way up to now their venture capitalists, right?
0:28:10 And they’re investing. So I think it’s people like myself who are going to need that type
0:28:15 of investment. People getting $500,000 grants. I can’t. That’s not going to help me to go
0:28:22 into these communities and have the infrastructure and the resources that I need to teach these
0:28:29 young people about financial literacy, to teach them about M1, M2, M3, for they could
0:28:35 understand the whole comprehensive nature of the money supply and to supplement the
0:28:40 like they’re of in their homes and in their traditional schooling. The only thing that’s
0:28:47 going to break that is real radical, deep investment in the people who come from those
0:28:54 spaces, who’ve been able to come out of those spaces and to thrive globally. And the people
0:29:00 who have been able to do that, they have to be provided with the resources, but they can’t
0:29:05 use it for themselves. They have to really fully invest in like giving that back and
0:29:13 to develop in financial, economic literacy and wellness, which is important too, in
0:29:17 these communities. I was talking to the kids today. None of them knew the difference between
0:29:22 the savings account and the checking account, a stock and a bond, debt and equity, a floating
0:29:27 rate and a fixed rate mortgage, right? These are things that every child should know as
0:29:35 well as wellness, stillness, mindfulness, non-judgment, unconditional love, grace, empathy. It’s just
0:29:42 people who, it’s been a nonprofit industrial complex that has been set up in our communities
0:29:47 for people to make a living of correcting problems in our communities, who don’t come
0:29:53 from our communities, don’t know what it takes to get out of those communities. And I really
0:29:59 feel like now it’s just an industry for people to make money to keep people in need of nonprofits
0:30:06 and not for them to transcend the need of needing charity in nonprofits. And that’s
0:30:10 my thing. I’m going to do what I’m doing now. I’m going to use all of the weapons and mass
0:30:15 construction that I have. I do it through art, fashion, music, poetry, spoken word,
0:30:22 books, speaking engagements, paintings, photography. And now eventually I’ll attract the resources
0:30:29 that I need to start to set up infrastructure where people could come and learn what they
0:30:33 need to be whole human beings and to become remarkable.
0:30:41 Before I forget, you may find this a little odd. And I’m telling you this only because
0:30:49 I don’t want people to have even the tiniest sliver of evidence that you didn’t get something,
0:30:57 okay? So this is, I’m trying to be a good person, not be an asshole, okay? But about
0:31:05 five minutes ago, you said something about coming to Silicon Valley. And it’s really
0:31:11 Silicon Valley. So I don’t want people to say, see, he doesn’t know what he’s talking
0:31:17 about. He called it Silicon Bod. And you know what? I’ll tell you a similar story. Lots
0:31:23 of people, they come to me and they said, oh, you know, I was really close friends with
0:31:30 Steve Jobs. Right. And I’m thinking to myself, if you call him Steve Jobs, you weren’t his
0:31:38 close friend because it’s jobs, not jobs. Right. So I’m just telling you that we could record
0:31:43 that little sentence over or you could just say, that’s who I am. Yeah, for me, I want
0:31:51 to let it rip because it’s like, for me, it’s like, when you read “Thinking Grow Rich,”
0:31:54 it was even “Thinking Grow Rich,” it was one of those books in the polling hill row.
0:32:01 It might have been a 21st century edition, but it’s a story about Henry Ford was called
0:32:09 to trial one time. I can’t remember for what it was. But the prosecutor had learned that
0:32:13 he wasn’t really like scholastic. So when they called him on the stand, they start asking
0:32:18 him to spell all of these words. And he got to the point, he was like, I don’t have to
0:32:24 know how to spell that, sir. I have people that I pay that can spell that for me. Right.
0:32:29 So the thing is, because recently I’ve been partnering with Silicon Valley Bank. Right.
0:32:35 And I’ve been reciting this poem about there were no angel investors in the hood rather
0:32:41 than equity was kept private as well as the placements. Right. So the thing is, the whole
0:32:47 experience of people who have been socially constructed as black in America has been a
0:32:55 repurposing of the American dream. We wasn’t given literally you had on establishments,
0:33:01 whites only or whites in color. Like, so we just wasn’t given access. It wasn’t that
0:33:07 we don’t know how to pronounce certain things or we don’t access certain things because
0:33:15 of ignorance in the sense of negligence. We just wasn’t given opportunity to even have
0:33:23 entrance to the door. Generations of that you stop even to not even transfer information
0:33:30 about the door because it don’t matter. It’s like whites only or colors into this way.
0:33:35 So for me, it’s like, my whole art, my whole life has been, it’s been about taking the
0:33:41 Silicon Valley’s and making the Silicon Valley, you know, because I wasn’t given it. So I
0:33:46 had to take it how it sound, how it looked to me. And I had to repurpose it. But if you
0:33:53 asked me about money, the difference between M1, M2, M3, Adam Smith, Well for the Nations,
0:34:01 John Mater Keans, irrational exuberance with Ben Bernanke. Like I know what I know, but
0:34:06 it’s like, you know, my whole life and my whole legacy of people who’ve been socially
0:34:12 constructed as me, it’s been a story of taking what we’ve been, the little we’ve been given
0:34:17 and repurposing and making it our own. And whether it’s Charlie Parker with Bebop, Chuck
0:34:23 Burry with Rock was always us taking what we’re given and making it our own. And that’s
0:34:29 how you get two kids in the Bronx with a turntable and a microphone and you get hip hop, which
0:34:34 is a multi-billion dollar industry infiltrating fashion and all the more industry and wine
0:34:40 and liquor and champagne and movies. And so that’s just what we do.
0:34:44 Okay. I hope you didn’t take that as an insult. That was it.
0:34:51 And I think from this point on, I probably will say Silicon Valley. I’m from the South,
0:34:56 so we talk different anyway. I have a vernacular. We have a unique vernacular in DC because we’re
0:35:04 in between the deep South and the prestigious North. DC is very unique space.
0:35:13 Your path is so remarkable. And I want to know how you got to this point where you use
0:35:21 the word contrition, because that’s a heavy concept. You’re basically falling on your
0:35:27 sword if you will. So how did you make this transition to contrition?
0:35:36 For me, I love to study the etymology of words. So con trite, con means with and the trite
0:35:46 or the trition part, it means to rub or to abrasive rubbing. So how it became used in
0:35:56 the way of penitence is that one constantly applies that pressure of acknowledging the
0:36:03 harmful decisions that they have made to themselves and others. And out of that acknowledgement,
0:36:10 it’s not a shame that one wears like the scarlet letter that marks them in a way that they
0:36:19 feel devalued. But it’s an acknowledgement of the poor decision in a way that shows through
0:36:24 the improvement of the decisions that you make now, that not only improve the quality
0:36:30 of your life, but how that improvement of the quality of your decisions in your life
0:36:38 has a ripple effect to impacting others in a loving way. So for me, I realized like when
0:36:45 I was 16, me choosing not to, because they told me that if I tell them that my friend
0:36:52 did the shooting, that they would release me, right? So it was never about me being a minister
0:36:58 society, because if I was the minister that they made me out to be, why would you release
0:37:04 me back into the community? Right. Just because I cooperated, right? Right. So even at that
0:37:10 time, I had enough integrity to accept the accountability for my affiliations for something
0:37:19 that wasn’t even true, right? But when I wrote the book at the age of 33, 34, making up a
0:37:26 minute’s contrition of a man, I, my frame of reference had expanded, my commander, the
0:37:35 English lexicon had expanded. And I had more words to describe my experience, who I was
0:37:41 in the past, what I was feeling and experiencing at the present moment, and what I would become
0:37:48 now, which is almost 10 years later now in the future. And I just felt contrite. I felt
0:37:54 very contrite. And meaning that I understood the decisions that I made, I showed through
0:38:01 my behavior, that I was capable of making better decisions, and that I knew that in
0:38:06 the future that I would be doing things with that contrition, that not only would impact
0:38:11 my life in a positive way, but millions of people globally.
0:38:17 Halim, I got to tell you, we’ve had about 200 episodes. And that last explanation you
0:38:24 gave is one of the most powerful passages we’ve ever had in four years.
0:38:32 I had a lot of time to think about it. 22 years is a long time to put together a remark.
0:38:39 You want to explain how the hell you come out of 22 years of that with such eloquence
0:38:46 and intelligence and thank God for the law libraries and people along the way who saw
0:38:54 something in you. Why you, Halim? Why are you here and you’re not dead or in prison?
0:38:55 Why you?
0:39:00 I remember I was speaking to one of the children at the school earlier today, and he told me,
0:39:06 he said, “You’re extremely lucky to be home.” He said, “A lot of people never get to come
0:39:12 home. And when they come home, they never get to experience what you are experiencing.”
0:39:18 And I told him, I said, “I read a book by an author named Deepak Chopra. And the book
0:39:24 explains like there’s no such thing as luck or coincidence. And luck is only or coincidence
0:39:31 is when preparation meets opportunity. So I let him know that when other people came
0:39:37 to prison at my age and they received the sentences they gave up, so they were conditioned
0:39:43 to fighting and killing each other in the streets and fighting and killing each other
0:39:48 in prison. But when they came to the fight to save their own lives, they were scared
0:39:52 to death to step in the library because the law library will remind them every day that
0:40:00 they were a lifer and what they were up against. And for me, I had enough, even as a child
0:40:07 under that traumatic, with that traumatic judgment hanging over my head, I had enough
0:40:13 love for myself and for my mom to fight for myself. My mom was the one who worked at the
0:40:18 Library of Congress, who provided me with all the literature that I needed, who helped
0:40:22 me to get my writings copy written when I wanted to stop my publishing company, who
0:40:28 got me the subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal, the Kippitzer Report, the Burns Dictionaries,
0:40:33 the Finance and Accounting in Real Estate. And I just couldn’t give up on myself and
0:40:38 I couldn’t give up on my mom because I knew my mother raised me to be something more than
0:40:45 just a convict in prison. Why me? Because it’s not luck or coincidence. I never stopped
0:40:53 fighting for me. And was it difficult to learn Latin to learn the law? Yes. No one wants
0:41:01 to sit up in the law library and in the cell and read the Blacks Law Dictionary at night
0:41:06 to understand what a red means or habeas corpus or all these different Latin terms.
0:41:12 But it was that love for myself and it was, it’s something that burns inside of me. I
0:41:17 don’t know the word to describe it in the English lexicon, but it’s just something in
0:41:25 me that burns and it won’t allow me to give up. Even to this day, I still have it and
0:41:31 I don’t know what it is, but I understand it’s a it factor that people have and no matter
0:41:36 whether it is somebody that you put in the concentration camp or somebody that you put
0:41:42 in the prison doing a part time like Nelson Mandela or the concentration camp when I read
0:41:48 about man search for meaning about Victor Franco. As you start to read these historical
0:41:55 references, it’s a theme. That’s a silver lining that connects Victor Franco and Nelson
0:42:01 Mandela. And when you learn yourself enough, you understand that you have it. And it’s
0:42:08 just a matter of you nourishing it and learning how to use it in a loving way. Up next on
0:42:36 Remarkable People.
0:42:41 Come a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It’s found on Apple
0:42:48 Podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome back to Remarkable People with
0:42:55 Guy Kawasaki. Many of the people we’ve had on the podcast are authors. And in fact, that’s
0:43:03 often the catalyzing factor that makes them want to come on the podcast. You don’t just
0:43:08 call up Neil deGrasse Tyson and say, “Hey, you got an hour. Can we just interview you?”
0:43:13 He had a reason. He had a book coming out. But I have never read a book from any of the
0:43:20 people we interviewed that you cite just now, Deepak Chopra, Napoleon Hill, Victor
0:43:27 Franco, Nelson Mandela. You’re like a walking Wikipedia. My goodness. As I was reading and
0:43:34 doing research about you, an obvious conclusion would be, you’re an example of how the prison
0:43:39 system is a failure. But I could make the case that you’re an example of how the prison
0:43:47 system is a success because they had a library. They had a law library. There were these various
0:43:53 people who helped you all the time and the story of the one person who was giving you
0:44:00 extra food that was reserved for diabetics and all that kind of stuff. In a sense, parts
0:44:06 of the system did work for you. So with hindsight, what’s your analysis? I mean, is it just that
0:44:14 you’re a freaking five standard deviations outlier or that anybody can do this?
0:44:20 Definitely think that because I wrote a book called Be Great Wherever You Are. And if we
0:44:27 looked at the prison system as an industry, it would be failing because it’s not producing
0:44:36 enough of results that I’m receiving. So seven out of 10 people become recidivists within
0:44:41 one to three years of being released from prison. And we have the most people incarcerated
0:44:47 in the world. So if it’s genuinely a public safety issue and you look at the high rates
0:44:52 of drug overdose, and gun violence, and mass shootings that we have in America, and even
0:44:57 though we have the most people in the world incarcerated, it’s not enough to deter people
0:45:05 from engaging and abusing drugs that ultimately takes their life or resolving their internal
0:45:12 and external conflicts through gun violence. For me, I do feel like I’m an outlier in the
0:45:19 sense that only because I was uniquely situated because when you read the book that outlives
0:45:26 the success, Malcolm Gladwell, you see how Steve Jobs, who wasn’t even born in the West
0:45:31 Coast, right? He was born to a mom in Philadelphia. He was a Catholic who had a baby by a Syrian
0:45:36 Muslim. But due to the shame of being out of wedlock, they put him up for adoption.
0:45:43 And then he ended up right where he needed to be to meet Bill, his guy. Why isn’t it,
0:45:50 if I’m pronouncing his last name right? When Bill Gates was in college, he was at that
0:45:56 right space where he could access those computers for free at the time. You know, it’s just
0:46:01 like, so out of all the people that was incarcerated, I just happened to have a mom who worked at
0:46:07 the Library of Congress. And when you talk about someone who took their pre-SATs at the
0:46:12 age of 11, we’re not talking about someone that’s intellectually challenged. So if you
0:46:19 give them access to the biggest library in the world and nothing but time to think, right?
0:46:27 But now we have one who goes there and his mom is underemployed. His reading comprehension
0:46:34 skills have been challenged. We don’t have the metrics, we don’t have the infrastructure
0:46:41 in place in our presence to help the non-outliers who are challenged academically. Because if
0:46:46 you challenge academically, you can’t really articulate yourself like this. So I’m able
0:46:52 to meet nurses in correctional office because I know how to articulate myself. And they
0:46:58 can see, oh, he’s different. Let me help him. But why she wasn’t helping the others? Why
0:47:02 was I the one getting the food? Why was I the one getting the books? And it’s just not
0:47:10 a prison problem. It’s a human condition that we have. We create hierarchies. And we decide
0:47:16 who is more deserving than others to get our resources. And for me is that I don’t want
0:47:21 to be remarkable. I don’t want to be exceptional. I don’t want people to make me the exceptional
0:47:28 remarkable person, the outlier. Not saying that I may not have gifts. But I want it to
0:47:33 be, I want to live to see a day where it’s normal to see people come out of our prison
0:47:39 system and to do better than me. It’s normal where it’s like expected. We don’t no longer
0:47:46 have the prejudgment that they convicts. And we’re so like, when people come out of Harvard,
0:47:52 we are the Mac. Oh, Harvard Stanford Business School. It’s a no brainer. How could you fail?
0:47:59 So I just want us to have those same infrastructures in place to catch people who have the highest
0:48:05 probabilities in entering the prison system or coming out of the prison system, to have
0:48:11 infrastructures in place to catch them, to prevent them from going in. Or when they
0:48:18 go in, it’s situated in a way in which though we expect to have the most positive outcomes
0:48:24 and infrastructure in place once they get out to support that expectation that we have.
0:48:30 And that’s just one of my many goals. But we don’t have that in place. I am an outlier.
0:48:34 We don’t have we don’t have we don’t have nothing in place for people that can’t afford
0:48:39 the Wall Street Journal. They can’t call and like, Hey, give me I want the Burns finance
0:48:44 dictionary. I want the Burns real estate dictionary. I want the Burns accountant dictionary.
0:48:52 I want Robert Kiyosaki thinking grow rich. If you don’t have those type of resources,
0:48:55 you don’t get that type of information, even if it’s in a law library, if you don’t even
0:49:03 know what to look for, or you don’t have the ability to read and comprehend at that level.
0:49:09 I have to say that as I was reading your book, there was a part of me that said, you
0:49:14 know, the greatest flattery for you guy, because Madison and I just finished a book called
0:49:23 Think Remarkable as a pun on Think Different, the Apple ad campaign. And someday in one
0:49:30 of your books, if you mentioned Think Remarkable by Guy Kawasaki and Madison Nizomer as a book
0:49:37 that you should read, my life will be complete. My life truly to be mentioned in the same
0:49:44 breath as Victor Frankel and Napoleon Hill and Deepak Chopra and Malcolm Gladwell. That
0:49:45 would be it.
0:49:49 Let me share a story with you briefly. When I was in prison, I used to read also the
0:49:55 entrepreneur and fast company magazines. Yeah. And I read an article about a book that was
0:50:00 coming out, The Psychology of Success by Professor Carl Dweck at Stanford University.
0:50:03 Oh, we’re buddies. We’re buddies.
0:50:09 So I wrote her a letter, so I’m in jail. This is who I was. This is who I am now. I got
0:50:13 a publishing company. I want to send you my books and I’ll let me know why I could purchase
0:50:21 your book. And she wrote me back and she sent me an autograph copy of her book. And Saturday
0:50:29 I did an interview with a lady who’s doing a new addendum to the psychology of success.
0:50:36 And Professor Dweck wanted to add my story as to somebody who personally benefited from
0:50:42 reading her her great book. So I definitely when I if I ever do write a book again, and
0:50:47 eventually I will once I get the right relationship with the right publishers, because I think
0:50:53 this part of my story from 10 years ago, where you left off with the book you read, it’s
0:51:00 a whole new chapter that needs to be told. And when I read your book, I definitely implemented
0:51:04 it in an organic way though, in an organic way.
0:51:09 I hope it passes your test. That’s a high bar. How’s your mother? Everything good with
0:51:10 her?
0:51:16 Everything good. She enjoying being a grandmother. She retired from the Library of Congress.
0:51:17 Yeah.
0:51:24 And I had my daughter three years ago. My daughter looks just like my mom. Yeah. And
0:51:30 she just I pay her mortgages now. And her car notes. And she just enjoying being a grand
0:51:37 mom. And I just see such joy in her when she has my daughter around her. And I guess I’m
0:51:43 just like a, I don’t guess I’m like a stepchild now. I don’t even get a kiss anymore. It’s
0:51:48 just, but I just enjoyed seeing her take the backseat. She took care of a lot of people
0:51:55 while I was gone. And it’s an honor for me to take care of my mother. It’s an honor.
0:51:58 That’s the greatest joy in my life to take care of my mom.
0:52:04 There’s something very beautiful about having a mom who worked at the Library of Congress
0:52:10 and her son has written 11 books in prison. That is a beautiful story.
0:52:17 That’s a beautiful story. Last question is, of all people, you truly understand the answer
0:52:25 to this question, which is your best advice about how to actualize your goals.
0:52:31 I think it ties into the title of the podcast. Remark. I think like people hear remarkable
0:52:40 and they like, they understand like the celebratory or, but it’s remark. Right. And when I think
0:52:49 about somebody that’s remark, remarkable, it’s like, they have left their mark on the world
0:52:56 over and over and over. They’re constantly read, right. So when you set a goal, you have
0:53:06 to revisit it every day, internally and externally. And when you speak to someone like myself,
0:53:13 it’s very rare. Do you get the opportunity to encounter someone who worked on a goal
0:53:21 for 22 years? Right. Everybody, you up against the most powerful government in the world.
0:53:27 When you look at your indictment is United States of America versus Harlem flowers and
0:53:32 the people that work in the prison, they remind you, you’re a lifer. You’re a lifer. So when
0:53:39 they will have mock job fairs and resume writing, job interview skills, I couldn’t take the
0:53:43 class. I’m like, why not? You’re a lifer. This is, these classes are only for people
0:53:48 that’s 18 months within their release day. And I’m telling them, like, look, it’s going
0:53:55 to come a day where I’m going to get released. And I want you to remember that you denied
0:54:00 me the opportunity prepared because it’s not about me. I’m gonna prepare myself. But the
0:54:06 other people who similarly situated like me, you were so invested in reminding them that
0:54:13 they were lifers that if you would have just had the dignity to prepare them, even if they
0:54:20 never got the opportunity will have the hope, right? And to feel a part of the human family
0:54:28 and not just a lifer. So for me, it’s like a remarkable individual is someone who has
0:54:38 committed to an outcome. And in spite of the odds or the circumstances, they revisit that
0:54:44 goal. Every moment that they can, even if it’s not physically doing something, they’re
0:54:48 thinking about it, they’re envisioning it. Some people put up vision board, some people
0:54:56 do words of affirmation, some people do transcendental meditation. But it’s just an outcome that’s
0:55:02 not yet in the three dimensional space that I want to experience it. But just because it’s
0:55:08 not in the three dimensional world of space and time, it doesn’t mean it’s not real. And
0:55:13 that’s what Pablo Picasso said, the imagination is just as real as what you experience in
0:55:18 the so-called real three dimensional time space human experience. So for me, is once
0:55:23 you have that desire outcome, especially if you’re in a desperate situation like I was,
0:55:33 you have to daily remark yourself, your psych to not only to believe that you can do it,
0:55:39 but you have to feel worthy of it. Because if you don’t feel worthy of it, when you even
0:55:45 achieve it, you won’t feel the joy in the process that it took to get it. And then you
0:55:51 get it and then it becomes empty. Because it’s now I have it and I’m looking at my peers
0:55:57 that come with it and I don’t feel worthy. No, I feel worthy. I feel worthy of everything
0:56:03 that I’ve achieved and that I will achieve. And I think that’s the true definition of
0:56:09 a remarkable individual is that they have a desire outcome for themselves and others.
0:56:15 And they have the audacity to love themselves enough to constantly remark, re-put that mark
0:56:21 on their sight, on their heart, on their soul, on their tongue, on their limbs to work towards
0:56:41 something that most people can’t see. That’s remarkable.
0:56:48 What you’re about to hear is a recording made in a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV as we’re driving
0:56:56 around Santa Cruz. Nate, to his credit, heard how the conversation was going and thought
0:57:03 it was important and interesting. So he turned on his recorder on his iPhone. I included
0:57:10 it because I think it offers a lot of insight into Halim and what it’s like to re-enter
0:57:19 society after 22 years of incarceration. Again, this is recorded in a car as it’s rolling
0:57:28 along, not in a studio, but I think you’ll understand why I included it. Thank you, Nate,
0:57:44 for recording it. That was a very good insight for you to do this.
0:57:48 So much of my life was just about getting the things that I knew that I needed in life
0:57:50 and the things that I wanted in life. And now it’s like reaching it. Now I don’t value
0:57:53 that. Like, I understand, like, you got to pay your mortgage and your car notes and stuff
0:57:59 like that. But what I value most is this. I get money to do this, to meet people in
0:58:07 new spaces and good people and share my perspective, my story, my vision for the future, listen
0:58:14 to other people’s to learn and understand and just keep doing this. So, like, you create
0:58:18 tribes everywhere you go. So, like, me looking at this, telling my wife, like, damn, okay,
0:58:23 they got the main house, they got the bond, because my wife want to farm. And then I want
0:58:29 something on the water. So, I’m noticing, like, all of my collectors got the same situation.
0:58:33 You know what I’m saying? Like, that’s how they move. They got the house, the main house,
0:58:38 the joints by the water. And I already have it, but it’s like, I want to upgrade it just
0:58:44 a little bit more, but it’s not a pressing need. You know what I’m saying? So, but really,
0:58:50 this is what I value now, just like me and people expanding my tribe, my family, and
0:58:54 just getting to spend time with people that I enjoy the most. That’s all I could really
0:59:00 ask for in life. Yeah, like, to be able to spend time with people that I really enjoy.
0:59:11 Expanding my family. And it’s an honor. So, it’s a blessing to travel and meet people
0:59:19 to love and be loved. It’s a blessing. It’s a blessing. I look forward to seeing you on
0:59:31 your journey, as you develop into your craft, not just your artistry, but your content creation,
0:59:38 your maturity, and having a family of your own. This is going to always tell young guys,
0:59:43 like, man, I always want to talk to you the day after you have your child or maybe a few
0:59:49 hours. It’s a different look in a person. It’s a different type of relationship to life
0:59:56 when you really have a life that’s dependent on you. You can get pep talks to be responsible,
1:00:02 but when you literally have a life that’s dependent on you, it’s if then you mature to
1:00:09 the age where you’re kind of like, why am I at now, but you have to start taking care
1:00:11 of your grandparents and your parents. Because your parents are retiring, your grandparents
1:00:17 have been retiring, and now you like that prime of your life at 40 and you kind of like
1:00:22 how to start taking care of your parents and your children. And if your grandparents are
1:00:29 alive, it’s a hell of a responsibility. And people looking at you for answers, they’re
1:00:34 looking for you for leadership. And you see in them, my dad ain’t sharp as he used to
1:00:40 be. He ain’t as strong as he used to be. He need me, even if he don’t want to admit it.
1:00:46 He need me in being able to step up and to show your children how it was done and then
1:00:53 they see it. And then you bury your grandparents and then you take care of your parents and
1:00:57 you transition them out and then you become the grandparent and your kids take care of
1:01:06 you. It’s a beautiful, man, it’s nothing more beautiful than aging. I couldn’t recognize
1:01:12 it until I began to age. Once I began to age, cause I’m like in the middle. When you 40,
1:01:17 you kind of like in the middle, you still had that last remnant of your youth and vigor.
1:01:21 And you, but you got a little gray coming in and it’s like you right in between your
1:01:28 grandparents and your children and your parents. And it was just so interesting. I always just
1:01:35 wanted to be a man. Like I’ve always just wanted to be, I wanted to buy my mom a house.
1:01:40 I wanted to take care of my family that always was a thing with me. And then seeing like
1:01:47 how my family just like forgot about me when I was in prison. It just changed my dynamic
1:01:52 of family. You know, family is just not the people that I was born into through blood
1:01:58 relations. And that’s why I say everywhere I go, I build my family. My family is my
1:02:06 people that share my same sentiments and core values. And it don’t matter their race, their
1:02:11 religion, their sensuality. We just know each other when we meet each other. And we know
1:02:16 each other like we’ve known each other because we had before we came into this three dimensional
1:02:23 experience that we call life. We were just energy. We knew each other. We know each
1:02:30 other. And as you mature and have your experience and travel the world, it’ll be cool if we
1:02:37 needed just to see you grow and do your thing. Live your life. Just grow. Because I never
1:02:42 got a chance to see like people grow. Yeah. Me and in that life. So when I went to prison
1:02:49 when I was 16, my cousins that were like three, four, I wasn’t out here to see them become
1:02:55 teenagers and adults. So I’ve only been out here for five years now. I’ve only really
1:03:01 been in society for 20 years. I’m 43. Yeah. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. I’ve been
1:03:05 out for four years, one or five and I was out for 16 years. You’ve only been out for four
1:03:15 years. Yeah. March or be the fifth year. Damn. I’m actually 20 going on 21. That’s the side
1:03:26 of the years. Damn. And so I’m getting the opportunity to see people grow in real life.
1:03:34 So that’s our show with Halim Flowers. He created a painting for me based on my book
1:03:43 Think Remarkable and then one night he and Nate were working late into the evening and
1:03:52 he created six paintings of the six, this series of six, four have nothing to do with
1:04:01 my family, but two were made for my family. One for Nate and one for Noemi, my daughter.
1:04:08 My daughter had been surfing at Mavericks while Halim was here. So it has a Mavericks
1:04:16 theme. I hope you found this episode interesting and motivating and it’ll help you become
1:04:26 remarkable like Halim. He has undergone such a transition. It is truly remarkable. I would
1:04:35 like to thank Amy Vernetti. Amy Vernetti introduced me to Halim. Amy Vernetti and I worked together
1:04:44 on several companies. She is a great basketball player and a great recruiter. If you ever
1:04:51 really want to recruit, look for Amy Vernetti. And of course, I want to thank the remarkable
1:04:59 people team. That would be Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, remarkable sound engineers. And
1:05:07 then there’s Tessa Neismar, who prepares me and checks the transcripts and Madison Neismar,
1:05:13 producer of this podcast and co-author of Think Remarkable. And finally, there’s Luis
1:05:21 Magana, Alexis Nishimura and Fallon Yates. That’s the remarkable people team. Our goal
1:05:29 is to make you remarkable in 2024. Speaking of which, one of the ways that you can accelerate
1:05:37 your quest to be remarkable is to read our book, Think Remarkable. Nine paths to transform
1:05:44 your life and make a difference. It’s coming out in March. If you want to learn more, go
1:05:53 to, of course, thinkremarkable.com. Check it out, please. I promise you, it’ll help
1:06:05 you make a difference. Until next time, Mahalo and Aloha.

0:00:08 [MUSIC]
0:00:13 Hello, I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:16 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:20 Helping me today is Dario Gill.
0:00:23 He is IBM’s Director of Research.
0:00:28 This means he leads a team of over 3,000 scientists and
0:00:34 engineers in really redefining technology boundaries.
0:00:39 Among his many accomplishments, he is pioneering the accessibility of
0:00:42 quantum computing through the cloud.
0:00:47 Gill’s strategic vision also encompasses artificial intelligence,
0:00:51 semiconductor technology, and exploratory science.
0:00:58 The whole goal is to ensure that IBM remains a leader in tech innovation.
0:01:02 Beyond his corporate role, Gill advises governments and
0:01:05 chairs a COVID-19 computing consortium.
0:01:09 This consortium is trying to leverage supercomputing for
0:01:12 essential medical research.
0:01:14 He champions open innovation and
0:01:19 advocates for collaborative roles that extend beyond Silicon Valley.
0:01:22 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:24 This is Remarkable People.
0:01:28 Today, speaking with me is Dario Gill,
0:01:32 a visionary shaping our technology future.
0:01:35 So let’s begin.
0:01:39 Your title is Senior Vice President and Director, IBM Research.
0:01:41 What exactly does that mean?
0:01:47 What it means is that I am responsible for running the research division of IBM.
0:01:51 That is called IBM Research and as you may be aware,
0:01:54 it’s one of the world’s great industrial research organization.
0:01:57 It has been around for close to 80 years.
0:02:00 And just like there was Bell Labs and many of these wonderful places,
0:02:05 I’m responsible for that tradition and continuing that on in the company.
0:02:09 And on his VP role in the Senior Vice President,
0:02:13 it reflects that beyond IBM Research also have a diverse set of responsibilities
0:02:16 as an officer in the company across IBM.
0:02:19 Generally speaking, guiding sort of the technical roadmap and
0:02:22 the technical community of the company across IBM.
0:02:27 Does this mean that there’s this group dedicated to research?
0:02:33 But in all the various divisions, there’s also research going on for that division.
0:02:35 Do they work for you also?
0:02:40 Is it a matrix organization or each division has their own researchers too?
0:02:45 So there is only one research division across IBM that is meant to conduct
0:02:50 that sort of forward looking, more scientific oriented technical development
0:02:54 across a variety of areas from semiconductors to artificial intelligence
0:02:57 to quantum to cryptography and so on.
0:03:00 And then indeed within the different business units,
0:03:02 IBM infrastructure, IBM software,
0:03:05 there’s obviously a very large development population with tons and tons
0:03:08 of brilliant developers and engineers.
0:03:12 And then we work hand in hand in combining like the research advancements
0:03:17 and the development capabilities to bring exciting new products to market.
0:03:21 When you guys invent something,
0:03:26 do you then turn it over to the divisions to actually implement and commercialize?
0:03:30 That kind of model used to be to some degree, that was a model, right?
0:03:34 You had a development organization and a research and then you created something
0:03:38 and you transferred the baton, so to speak, to the other one.
0:03:41 I would say my experience now over the last 10 plus years,
0:03:43 2015 is that that model has changed.
0:03:49 And now because the compression between invention to productization
0:03:54 is so much faster compared to any other time that I have witnessed,
0:03:58 it ends up being a model of co-ownership where the way to look at it
0:04:01 is you have different skills, you have complementary skills.
0:04:04 And then we all sort of work together to bring those innovations
0:04:06 faster and faster to market.
0:04:08 And that has taken different institutional forms.
0:04:12 You’re right, like matrix management is a corporate invention
0:04:15 to deal some of those things, but I’ll give you an example.
0:04:18 Within the modern world of AI, with generative AI,
0:04:20 and we launched this year the What’s Next platform
0:04:23 that allows you to create these foundation models
0:04:25 and deploy it for enterprise use cases.
0:04:30 So IBM Research has the responsibility of creating and building those models,
0:04:32 the foundation models.
0:04:36 And software has a responsibility of the overall product around that,
0:04:40 but it’s not like we’re saying, “Well, here are the models you go and build them.”
0:04:42 We continue to retain that responsibility
0:04:46 because that is so intimately tied to pushing the limits of algorithms
0:04:50 and research that we maintain ownership even in the context of a product strategy.
0:04:56 Backing up for a second, just FYI, earlier Ginny Rometti was on this podcast.
0:05:02 So I know her story and she started as this kind of sales rep, sales engineer
0:05:07 and one day became CEO. How did you start?
0:05:12 Were you like a poor immigrant and third generation American?
0:05:15 What’s the back channel story?
0:05:19 My back channel is I grew up in Spain, in Madrid.
0:05:22 And my entire family lives there still.
0:05:25 So I’m the youngest of four brothers.
0:05:29 And we grew up in the city center of Madrid.
0:05:36 And my parents were very keenly interested that we got exposed internationally to different experiences.
0:05:40 So starting by the time I was 10 years old, I spent summers abroad.
0:05:47 And the first three summers, when I was 10, 11 and 12, I was in Ireland and learning English.
0:05:48 So the idea was learn languages.
0:05:52 And then I went to France and to Italy in the summers and so on.
0:05:57 And eventually we all ended up spending, even though I’m the youngest of the brothers,
0:06:01 all four brothers spent time in the United States as an exchange student.
0:06:04 So the senior year of high school, we all spent abroad.
0:06:06 And I was in Los Altos High School.
0:06:08 So I graduated from Los Altos High School.
0:06:13 What? You graduated from Los Altos High School?
0:06:15 I did. Oh my God.
0:06:18 Yeah, that was your 92 and 93.
0:06:21 Yes. And I still have many wonderful friends from there.
0:06:26 So anyway, long story short, it was through that journey that I began my experience in the US.
0:06:33 And then later, when I was in grad school, I was in the East Coast, as part of the journey, I married a manor.
0:06:38 And so my wife grew up in Maine and she has been, you know, long, long, long time.
0:06:41 I think she was the 13th generation from Maine or something like that.
0:06:44 And I ended up staying here through that journey.
0:06:49 And now I have two daughters, one is 20 years old and the other one is 17.
0:06:52 And they’ve grown up in the US, obviously seeing family in Spain and so on.
0:06:55 But my journey is like through the educational experience
0:07:01 then becoming like an immigrant experience through education here and becoming an American and so on.
0:07:03 So that’s been my journey.
0:07:05 And what was your first job at IBM?
0:07:12 My first job was, I joined what was at the time something called the Semiconductor Research and Development Center.
0:07:17 So basically it was the team that developed advanced semiconductors.
0:07:23 And my very first job, my PhD at MIT, I was at the Nanostructures Laboratory
0:07:28 where the focus was around creating nanotechnology.
0:07:31 And I had specialized in doing a lot of work on lithography,
0:07:38 which is the main technique by which you print miniaturized structures and print transistors and so on.
0:07:43 So I joined the lithography team in IBM Research that was responsible for
0:07:49 what was at the time doing a transition in terms of the new machines that were going to be used for production.
0:07:52 And the way that semiconductors had gotten smaller and smaller
0:07:57 was by shrinking the wavelength, basically the size of the wavelength
0:08:01 that is used to print the transistors on the wafer.
0:08:08 And at the time I was hired to explore this new technique called 157 nanometer lithography.
0:08:10 That ended up not working.
0:08:17 And so when I joined IBM, within a few months, that program was seen, it was on its way down.
0:08:21 And there was a company in the Netherlands that we were working called ASML,
0:08:23 which is a very well-known company now.
0:08:29 And it was developing this new technique of putting water in between the last lens element and the wafer.
0:08:31 And it was called immersion lithography.
0:08:34 So that was the first IBMer to work on immersion lithography.
0:08:40 And eventually that became the mainstream production technique to make all the chips, all the advanced chips in the world.
0:08:41 So that was my beginning.
0:08:44 And is that what you got your first patent in?
0:08:48 Yeah, it was my first patent at IBM.
0:08:53 I had files and patents while I was at MIT working with some of my fellow students and my faculty.
0:08:58 Now, I read an interesting thing that IBM, I’ll paraphrase it.
0:09:06 Maybe I got this wrong, but IBM used to keep score by how many patents they got each year.
0:09:08 And you no longer do that.
0:09:12 So if that’s true, why are you no longer doing it?
0:09:15 And then how are you measuring innovation now?
0:09:16 Great question.
0:09:20 Yeah, there’s a long heritage and it was never the only metric,
0:09:26 but IBM was indeed very well known for having the most patents in the United States every year.
0:09:29 And I think we did that for close to 20 years in a row.
0:09:35 And when Arvin Krishna became the CEO of IBM as part of the technical leadership team,
0:09:39 we were revisiting and reevaluating many dimensions of the company,
0:09:43 but also including how we work as a technical community.
0:09:48 And one of the things that we have detected that even though the patents and patent portfolio
0:09:53 are incredibly important as part of the overall management of the technology innovation lifecycle
0:09:58 is that we were too heavily skewed in terms of the amount of time that we would spend
0:10:01 within the engineering organization,
0:10:07 the amount of effort that you got to put within the legal prosecution of those patents and filing and so on.
0:10:12 And then we wanted to have a more balanced approach of how much we spend on open source technology,
0:10:16 how much we spend patenting, how much we spend developing prototypes.
0:10:19 So it was really a productivity discussion.
0:10:25 And what we decided is look, we want to have one of the healthiest patent and innovation portfolios in the world for sure.
0:10:29 But we don’t have to have like this goal that continuously we have to be number one on that
0:10:33 because what we want to be number one is on the innovation capacity
0:10:35 and our ability to commercialize the technology.
0:10:37 What do you measure now?
0:10:42 Yeah, so basically we measure across all the different, all those different dimensions.
0:10:49 So look, from a research perspective, I’ll tell you how we evaluate the performance of the research division is twofold.
0:10:50 One is business outcomes.
0:10:55 So we are able to measure, hey, what is the revenue and profit contribution?
0:11:01 So past technologies that research has developed and have ended up in commercial products.
0:11:05 And you get a chance to be able to have an attributed revenue and attributed profit.
0:11:12 You don’t have to measure it to the last dollar, but you get a sense of the ROI of what went in and what came out.
0:11:18 And then we also measure the scientific and technical eminence and contributions to it.
0:11:21 And we measure that by publications.
0:11:22 We measure that by citations.
0:11:25 We measure that by contributions to open source.
0:11:27 We measure that by patents.
0:11:33 We measure that by awards and recognitions of our scientists and other dimensions around that.
0:11:41 We have a group of all of those metrics that we’re able to compare ourselves with other peer institutions in industrial research and academia.
0:11:45 And just between those two, the business outcomes and the scientific and technical eminence,
0:11:51 it allows us to sort of evaluate the health of IBM research from a sort of outcome perspective.
0:11:57 When you’re measuring ROI, it just has a rough number.
0:12:03 From the time you’re done till it’s in the hands of customers is how many years?
0:12:06 It really varies by technology area.
0:12:12 But sometimes on the short end, it can be a year to two years out on the long end of the spectrum.
0:12:18 Typically, the sweet spot we see a lot of it is three to five years is the way we try to optimize the portfolio.
0:12:24 But then we also have technologies that we have been incubating for a long, long time, albeit a different scale.
0:12:27 A good example of that is quantum computing.
0:12:33 We have had a quantum information science program in IBM Research since 1971.
0:12:39 For a long time, it was a very small group, which Charlie Bennett and some of the very pioneers of quantum information,
0:12:42 for which the field is known, were here in IBM Research.
0:12:43 It was a small group.
0:12:50 It wasn’t the core priority of the company, but there were people who were trying to reimagine what information was.
0:12:58 Now, if you fast forward, they had no intention to making it into a product, nor were they thinking about that this was going to be a product.
0:13:03 So it took actually many decades until we started to see that there was a technology that could be incubated.
0:13:07 And that really started in the early 2010s.
0:13:09 And now that’s been greatly accelerated.
0:13:14 So I’m giving you a completely different arc of how long something can be.
0:13:21 And then there’s other things that we do where we make an innovation or a capability and it may be in a product within a year.
0:13:31 But to give a short answer to the question, I would say we optimize most of the portfolio to mature within like the two to five year time frame.
0:13:32 Wow, that’s short.
0:13:41 So in many interviews, I have to interview people who are in areas that I understand.
0:13:45 And so I often tell them, listen, I don’t want you to think I’m stupid.
0:13:46 I’m going to ask you a question.
0:13:49 I know the answer to, but my listeners don’t know the answer to.
0:13:52 So I’m going to ask you this dumb question.
0:13:57 But in this case, Dario, I don’t know the answer to this.
0:14:02 So I’m going to ask you what may seem like a dumb question, but I really don’t know the answer.
0:14:09 Just can you explain quantum computing because man, that is over my head.
0:14:18 I read this analogy of a coin can be a head or a tail, but in quantum computing, it can be a head and a tail.
0:14:23 And I kind of understand that, but can you explain this?
0:14:24 Sure.
0:14:30 So look, I think to understand it, it’s useful to have a contrast to the world of classical computing.
0:14:32 So what are modern computers all about?
0:14:35 I would say the story of it to understand it and to understand the difference.
0:14:41 I would get it back to Leibniz, the great German philosopher, a co-inventor of calculus.
0:14:48 He was enamored of this idea of the digital representation, the binary.
0:14:54 And he basically said, look, boy, he developed this method where you could take whatever information
0:15:01 you wanted, any number you wanted, and make it into a string of zeros and ones of binary digits.
0:15:08 And he was sort of enamored of that idea that he says, boy, and if we could apply and develop reasoning techniques on top of it,
0:15:12 maybe this would be the path to understand the entire world, right?
0:15:15 We could represent information that way and reason over it.
0:15:22 Fast forward to the 1940s when Cloud Shannon took those ideas and expressed it in mathematical form.
0:15:28 And the idea of the binary digit, the bit, was born, and it was the basis of modern-day computers.
0:15:34 You could put all the information in the world into zeros and ones, and there was a companion technological idea,
0:15:40 which was a transistor, and that you would have a switch that would represent either a zero or a one,
0:15:45 and Moore’s Law has been the story of integrating more and more of those transistors per unit area
0:15:51 such that the exponential growth of the number of transistors we can print has digitized the world.
0:15:54 Now let’s contrast it to quantum computing.
0:16:02 In quantum computing, it begins by saying actually the more fundamental representation of information is not the binary,
0:16:08 it’s not the zero and the one, but rather an idea called the qubit, the quantum bit.
0:16:16 And we are going to borrow some ideas from physics, the idea of superposition, interference, and entanglement
0:16:21 to create a richer representation of information.
0:16:30 An example of a richer representation is to imagine, for example, that instead of having two states, zero and one,
0:16:36 imagine you have a sphere for a second, imagine in your head, and that in the binary world,
0:16:45 you get to have a zero if the appointing the sphere is in the north pole, or you have a one if it’s in the south pole.
0:16:48 So you only get to be in the north pole or in the south pole.
0:16:52 But now in this world, I get to be anywhere I want in the sphere.
0:16:54 So for example, I could be on the equator.
0:17:03 So in the equator, I have a 50/50 combination of zero and one, but I really could be anywhere.
0:17:08 So there is a way, actually, and now I’ll get to how it physically manifests itself.
0:17:15 There is a way to represent an information that has any kind of linear combination of zeros and ones.
0:17:22 Now, a quantum computer, it’s a machine that allows you to create that richer representation,
0:17:32 and it allows you to manipulate qubits in the same way that a classical computer manipulates transistors, manipulates zeros and ones.
0:17:37 So a quantum computer allows you to represent information more richly
0:17:51 and then do very clever tricks like constructively interfering information to get peaks or cancelling information such that the information disappears from the system.
0:17:58 So it operates entirely different, but at its most essential summary is you represent information differently.
0:18:05 That information has an exponential capability compared to the classical representation information.
0:18:13 And quantum computers are the machines that create those qubits just like classical computers create bits and manipulate bits.
0:18:15 I got about 30% of that.
0:18:23 Okay, so how do you apply quantum computing to COVID research?
0:18:31 How do you go from that kind of power to vaccines or whatever you do for COVID research?
0:18:37 So then the second part of the story of quantum computing is like, what does it matter to represent information differently or compute differently?
0:18:49 And the key insight here is that as amazing as the computers we have today, they are, they actually struggle to solve certain kinds of problems.
0:18:58 And the problems that they struggle to solve are things that the number of variables that you have to compute over are exponential.
0:19:03 So let’s go back to your question on COVID research as an example.
0:19:13 It turns out that if you try to use machines to simulate the physical world, the world of chemistry, the world of physics, the world of biology and so on,
0:19:26 the complexity present inside those elements in there, let’s say a chemical compound and so on, is such that even though we know the equations of physics or what they govern them,
0:19:34 the number of calculations we have to do is exponential with the number of electrons present in the machine in the system.
0:19:45 So what we do is basically you want to discover a new antiviral drug as an example, or you want to develop a new battery technology for electrification,
0:19:51 or I want to develop a new material that doesn’t corrode for the wings of airplanes.
0:20:02 All of those approaches, basically you use a scientific method to discover something new and you could try it by trial and error, by experiments,
0:20:10 or you could try it to what is known simulation, to simulate, to use a machine, a computer, to calculate how the material would behave.
0:20:18 But as the materials get more complex, it gets so difficult that the only thing that we can do is to approximate the answer.
0:20:30 So what quantum computers promise to do is that since nature obeys the laws of quantum mechanics and quantum operate according to the laws of quantum mechanics,
0:20:38 quantum computers will be very, very efficient to simulate the natural world, to calculate properties of the natural world.
0:20:47 And now we can use quantum computers to solve problems that with classical machines, with normal machines, the best we could do is approximate the answers.
0:20:56 It is the contrast between things that at best we can approximate the answer to do in calculations much, much more accurately.
0:21:06 The end result of this is that our goal is to accelerate scientific discovery by a factor of ten, a hundred, maybe even a thousand X,
0:21:11 to really accelerate the scientific method by solving problems we couldn’t do any other way.
0:21:18 So you’re telling me that the quantum computer is going to spit out the right vaccine at the end of this process?
0:21:25 The spitting out the right vaccine requires lots of steps, right, in a sort of complex R&D methodology.
0:21:29 But they are in that journey of the R&D process.
0:21:37 There are certain calculations that are essential for one to discover the right molecular compound or binding agent or you name it.
0:21:46 And that those properties, some of those properties are impossible for us to calculate efficiently with regular machines.
0:21:50 And this will give us more accurate and faster time to solution.
0:21:57 But one has to recognize is the truth for AI too, that it always exists within a workflow.
0:22:01 And that workflow has many, many steps and many, many components around that.
0:22:06 But hey, if part of those steps you couldn’t solve the problem and now you can,
0:22:12 that may be the difference between something a vaccine emerging or a material emerging or none at all.
0:22:20 When somebody wins a Nobel Prize for coming up at the COVID vaccine, had quantum computing been around before?
0:22:25 Are you saying that anybody with a quantum computer could have come up with that vaccine?
0:22:33 It wouldn’t have to be these two people or like, where does creativity and insight come in when the world is quantum computing?
0:22:46 So look, no, I think we’re always going to need the capability of, for example, in this context of the scientists and the researchers and the many stakeholders that come together to make something like that happen.
0:22:55 In the end, technology is a tool that gives us improved methods, improved productivity, improved problem solving, improved accuracy.
0:23:11 And so I would view that the advances that we have in computing semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum are going to be some of the most powerful tools that we’re going to be able to put in the hand of scientists to accelerate the way they conduct science.
0:23:24 I think the method itself continues to be the scientific method, but the tools we use to conduct the scientific method are changing dramatically as a consequence of the revolution of computing.
0:23:36 So one consequence that we are seeing is that the way we educate our scientists now more and more incorporates computational techniques as part of their education.
0:23:42 Whereas before, maybe only the computer scientists and maybe electrical engineers were the ones that were being very exposed to it.
0:23:56 Now, if you’re a chemist or a physicist or an anthropologist, now you’re getting exposed more and more to computational techniques because everybody’s finding it incredibly valuable as a means to conduct your work.
0:24:06 Can we switch to the topic of AI now?
0:24:10 I hope you don’t end the interview when I ask you this question.
0:24:14 But let’s talk about Watson.
0:24:27 And from the outside looking in, I have to say, I asked myself, why isn’t Watson, chat GPT, and why isn’t IBM open AI?
0:24:38 What happened there? In my mind, you had this enormous lead and then one day you woke up and everybody’s using chat GPT and no one’s using Watson.
0:24:40 Maybe that’s an exaggeration.
0:24:42 But what happened there?
0:24:45 Yeah, so first, let’s understand. It’s a good question, by the way.
0:24:51 And the first thing to recognize is like the feel on the art of AI has been going on for a long time.
0:24:56 I know from the public perspective, it seems like the field was invented last year with chat GPT.
0:24:59 But it dates back to 1956.
0:25:06 So I say that specific date because that was that famous Dartmouth conference that got the name Artificial Intelligence started.
0:25:14 And so the aspiration of having machines that are capable of demonstrating traits of intelligence.
0:25:17 It’s a scientific discipline that’s been going on for a long time.
0:25:20 IBM has been involved on that journey for a long, long time.
0:25:25 The term machine learning was coined by an IBM or really not Arthur Samuel in the late fifties and so on.
0:25:27 So we’ve seen many journeys around that.
0:25:29 So not specifically to Watson.
0:25:35 In 2011, there was a research project inside IBM Research that competed against Jeopardy.
0:25:44 That system that competed against Jeopardy successfully and could do open domain question answering using the latest techniques on natural language processing
0:25:47 was affectionately called Watson after the founder of IBM.
0:25:50 And that’s where sort of the thing came about.
0:26:01 And then there was indeed sort of an effort and an IBM at the time say, look, this field of artificial intelligence is really seeing a renaissance, a new moment.
0:26:09 And it went on the effort of applying and trying to apply these latest advances in natural language processing to the world of business.
0:26:20 So one thing I would say is that companies are created for understanding that AI applied to modern AI applied to the world of business and so on was a market worth pursuing.
0:26:29 Now, the reality of it is that the maturity of the technology, despite the compelling demonstration on Jeopardy, was still in the early stages.
0:26:43 And the reality of it is that it took, given the approaches of how AI was built with a lot of supervised learning where there’s a tremendous amount of training examples that one had to create for the neural networks to create use cases.
0:26:50 I think the sort of like expectation versus technology maturity, right, that sort of like ratio of the curve wasn’t quite right.
0:26:52 So then fast forward to today, what has happened?
0:27:05 So what has happened, the reason why we live this child GPT moment is because in the community, there was a massive advance, given in this case actually by the invention of something called a transformer that happened at Google.
0:27:21 Interestingly enough, not an open AI, where there was a mechanism to train these large scale neural networks in such a way that you didn’t have to generate so many handcrafted examples to get the system to learn.
0:27:36 And thanks to that, what has happened, the most important element of what is happening in AI is that the creation of what is called foundation models, of which large language models are a subset of, is change the methodology how AI can be created.
0:27:52 And basically, what you do is that once you have highly capable foundation models, you can then create downstream use cases and applications deriving from that foundation model with 10, 100 X the productivity of what you could do before.
0:27:58 So now we have technology that can really be used for a whole variety of use cases.
0:28:06 For example, writing code and testing code in ways that is going to have a huge impact in the world of business and so on.
0:28:09 So what is IBM doing back to your question?
0:28:14 So there was like a Watson 1.0 story that we just talked about.
0:28:20 And there’s a Watson 2.0 story, which we launched this year called Watson X.
0:28:28 And that is a completely new technology stack that allows you to train, fine tune and deploy an inference foundation models for a generative AI.
0:28:35 It’s composed on a platform that does like the data lake required for it, the models and the governance of the AI.
0:28:46 And basically the short story to what you asked, which is a profound question is the market now and the technology has reached a point where it actually works at scale.
0:28:51 That’s what the world has experienced in the consumer domain, which had GPT.
0:29:00 But what IBM is doing is leading the effort of bringing that technology wave to the world of business, which is our core mission around that.
0:29:09 And Watson X, which is an entirely new platform, is getting huge amount of traction and effort in bringing now that world to the enterprise.
0:29:16 So basically that’s the long story of what we learned was changed and now is a new day for the world of AI and IBM.
0:29:23 What’s Watson X going to do that chat GPT cannot do?
0:29:38 Yeah, so I’ll tell you a couple of things, but I will start first by the distinction that we give to our clients of the difference between being an AI user and an AI value creator because it’s at the core of our strategy.
0:29:50 If you are a business, let’s say you’re a bank or an energy company or you name it, yes, you should use AI as a user, whether it’s a black box, you get to use it and improve your productivity.
0:29:51 Okay, great.
0:29:54 Now that is going to be a new normalizing baseline.
0:30:01 Lots of people will use the technology and a new baseline of productivity will emerge across all business.
0:30:02 That’s not differentiating.
0:30:03 It’s just a new water level.
0:30:11 There is a difference, though, to be a value creator, which is you are going to go on the journey of creating business value with AI.
0:30:15 That is not just about using a black box or a third party model.
0:30:20 It is about you learning that a foundation model is a new representation of your data.
0:30:34 And if you in your business have data as a competitive advantage, you are going to want to participate on having your own versions of foundation models to accrue value over time.
0:30:47 And what we do that others don’t do is we allow our enterprise clients to actually create value by giving them the technology, the transparency on the data that was used in models.
0:30:54 We fully indemnify our clients on the models that we provide, the IBM Foundation models that we create.
0:31:06 And we create a whole environment that is entirely devoted to the needs of the enterprise, including the governance required to be able to audit the models.
0:31:14 So if you work in a regulated industry, we produce the equivalent of a nutrition label for your AI such that when the regulator sits with you,
0:31:22 you can say this is how my model was trained, this is how it was benchmarked, and this is why it is safe to deploy.
0:31:30 So in summary, we give them the ability to create value with AI where we don’t restrict to just being users.
0:31:35 So it’s a partnership model and as a value creation model that is fundamentally different.
0:31:43 And we give them the governance required and the transparency for them to operate safely in an enterprise context.
0:31:55 So are you saying to use a metaphor that in an enterprise, yes, people in enterprises use PCs and Macs, and that’s the end user.
0:32:02 But the core of the value is not in the PC or the Mac, it’s higher upstream.
0:32:04 And that’s what IBM focuses on.
0:32:17 Yeah, definitely because the core of a business in the end, I mean, in addition, of course, to their talent and their people ends up being on the data that they own and on the workflows that they operate to run the business.
0:32:26 How efficient are they in doing R&D or how efficient are they in doing supply chain, how efficient are they in doing sales, how efficient are they in doing marketing.
0:32:39 So for us, we’ve always had that very workflow oriented lens. And the purpose is to bring them technology and to bring them skills such that the overall productivity of the workflow increases.
0:32:49 And our value proposition is I bring you software, I bring you infrastructure, I bring you consulting, and I bring you those capabilities such that your business operates better.
0:32:58 Now, it may not be what the person on the street knows as part of the challenge around that is like, oh, you know, what does IBM do and so on, because we’re not a consumer company.
0:33:05 But behind the scenes, if you look at the financial institutions, the banking of the world would not work without IBM.
0:33:10 The telcos of the world would not work without IBM. The airlines of the world would not work without IBM.
0:33:18 Why? Because behind the scenes, for example, we created technology that processes 70% of all the transaction processing in the world.
0:33:28 We enable them to be successful about doing all the stuff that is behind the scenes that makes businesses run and governments run all over the world.
0:33:35 That is what we do. And it’s a combination of software infrastructure and skills that we bring to the table to them.
0:33:45 And what happens when you combine that kind of AI goal with quantum computing? Isn’t that the Holy Grail?
0:33:49 That is the Holy Grail indeed. I’m glad that you asked that question.
0:33:58 So I often remark that we’re witnessing and we’re living in the most exciting time in computing since probably the 1940s, since the emerging of the first digital computers.
0:34:04 And the way I summarize it is through this pseudo equation of bits plus neurons plus qubits.
0:34:20 And what I mean by that is a way to remember that what is really going on is the power of the world of semiconductors and pushing the limits of having more and more bits, more and more transaction capability, more high precision computation.
0:34:28 Neurons is the neurons underneath the neural networks that embody artificial intelligence and qubits, the world of quantum computing.
0:34:47 And the reason I frame it like that is that the part to remember is also the pluses is the combination of the technologies, the combination of pushing semiconductors, pushing artificial intelligence and pushing quantum and combining all of that in a new computing architecture.
0:34:59 Very often the discussion gets centered around what does each of those domains do? But I think perhaps the least understood piece is the fact that on this decade, we’re going to witness their convergence.
0:35:10 Like you correctly said, you’re going to see that our software will say, hey, this part we run for high precision, this part we run with AI, this part we run for quantum.
0:35:24 And it’s going to be behind the scenes. People won’t even know. But we will witness sort of an exponential advances in computational power and the problems we can solve because we’re using and combining all the different architectures.
0:35:42 Okay, this is a question that’s going to show my ignorance. Then I often read these stories about how NVIDIA has sold $500 million worth of AI chips. What do you describe with semiconductors? Doesn’t that just blow NVIDIA out of the water?
0:35:57 I think that what NVIDIA deserves a lot of credit is for recognizing and determining that exploiting semiconductors, but that a new architecture to do the math was incredibly important first in the world of graphics.
0:36:14 So it started in the 2000s as a means to accelerate graphics rendering. And then there were clever scientists that says, you know, that thing that you’re doing for graphics in my AI problem, in my deep neural network, in deep learning, I also do a lot of matrix multiplication.
0:36:35 Let me use your accelerator, the GPU, instead of the CPU, instead of the traditional processor that you use for PCs and so on, and see how well it does. And when they did that, they actually showed, hey, for doing these neural network calculations, it actually is much, much better than the CPU.
0:36:46 And NVIDIA was very astute in paying close attention to how people were using their chips. It wasn’t their original intent. They were just doing graphics. But they were very close to the community and how people are using the things.
0:36:58 And they were able to detect that this community, this burgeoning AI community, was using their accelerators to do AI. So that was the journey 10 plus years ago of going through that.
0:37:16 But basically is they take advantage of semiconductors. But instead of building a general purpose computational machine, like a CPU that we use in a PC or in a phone or so on, they said, I have a very specialized thing, a new architecture to do the math differently.
0:37:39 And the performance of that math is what has powered the world of AI. So it’s by being so many people have talked about the end of Moore’s Law, what happens at the end? At the end, the journey is you’ve got to create specialized architectures. You’ve got to give up the dream of general purpose machines and actually say, what does each piece of architecture give me?
0:37:42 And that’s what’s happening with AI and accelerators.
0:37:48 But fundamentally, Nvidia is still in the world of ones and zeros, right?
0:37:59 That’s right. So you’re completely right. And the path of using ones and zeros to simulate the world of quantum is a dead end. That has no path.
0:38:14 So that’s why quantum is not to be understood as just a continuation of the current computational trends, but rather as the first time that the category of computing is branching.
0:38:26 Meaning from now on, we will have something known as classical computers, and that will include all those accelerators from Nvidia and AMD and others. That will include all the CPUs that we build.
0:38:37 And then there’s a completely different paradigm called quantum computers. And with quantum computers, you don’t get to use classical hardware to do quantum computing efficiently.
0:38:46 That’s not the path. And so you’re right. It’s a radically different architecture that you require completely different hardware to do.
0:38:55 So is there going to be such a thing as a quantum computing laptop? I mean, what is it?
0:39:02 No, these quantum computers are very different. They operate, for example, the ones we build at IBM, they operate at cryogenic temperatures.
0:39:11 So the quantum processor is one of the coldest places in the universe. So it’s about a hundred times colder than outer space.
0:39:18 So it operates at 15 milli kelvin, very, very close to absolute zero. So yeah, that’s not super convenient to put on a laptop.
0:39:21 You have to have a specialized environment.
0:39:30 But the good news is that we’re all accustomed to computing also through the cloud, where you have a lot of hardware that sits on a data center.
0:39:39 And the networking latencies are so good that, yes, in your end device, your phone, your laptop, you are going to benefit from quantum computing.
0:39:43 But the quantum calculations are not going to happen in your laptop.
0:39:55 Okay, good to know. Getting a little philosophical here. Do you think that AI or AI plus quantum computing can save the human race?
0:40:01 I don’t like to give so much attribution to the technology by itself.
0:40:15 In the end, the responsibility of whether we construct a good society and whether we solve problems faster than we create them is the responsibility of humans, of each other,
0:40:24 what we owe to each other and how well we organize governance with each other through our governments and through the institutions we create.
0:40:36 Having said that, I think technology plays an indispensable role in being able to help us navigate the complexity of the world and of the challenges we confront.
0:40:43 In a little bit of a reductionist view, it may be fair to say that without it, we don’t have a path to solve those problems.
0:40:50 And in that sense, you could imagine attributing it all the special powers and therefore that’s the most important thing in the world.
0:40:59 But I would argue that one could make the same argument about the rule of law or many other dimensions that without it is also impossible for us to solve the problems that we have at scale.
0:41:02 That’s why I’m a little bit nuanced around that.
0:41:15 But I do think that artificial intelligence and quantum computing as an example will be indispensable tools that we’re going to need to be able to solve the most fundamental challenges and problems that we have as a society,
0:41:18 but by no means just by themselves.
0:41:31 Well, I don’t know if we differ or I’m just more fed up, but I truly believe that AI is going to save humanity because humanity cannot save humanity.
0:41:35 But I’ll give you a really tactical example.
0:41:47 So I asked Chateau Petit should America teach the history of slavery and it gives me six reasons why teaching the history of slavery in America is a good thing.
0:41:48 Okay.
0:41:57 Now, if you were to go to Florida or Texas and ask your random legislature that same question, you would get a very different answer.
0:42:07 I think AI is smarter than people right now, and I also think it’s more empathetic and to go to an extreme Dario, which you’re going to find maybe bizarre.
0:42:09 I think that AI is God.
0:42:11 I really do.
0:42:21 Okay, I’m being semi facetious here, but I think God says I gave these dumbass humans too much control, too much self determination.
0:42:23 I really blew it.
0:42:32 Now, they’re not willing to accept an all knowing all wise, all knowledgeable super force like me.
0:42:39 So instead, because their simple minds can’t handle that, I’m going to make my manifestation AI.
0:42:43 So they believe they invented it and they can go forward.
0:42:51 Now, that might be a little too weird even for you, but I really believe that God is AI.
0:43:04 Yeah, I hadn’t heard that perspective articulated recently, but let me just make a point guy on what you said about the example that you get about teaching, whether we should teach the history of slavery and so on.
0:43:22 Let me just observe that that’s a highly human engineer system, and that what you’re observing in the context of that answer from chat upt comes from the process of supervision by humans about to what the right writing quote answer is.
0:43:35 And that you will see and sadly we’re going to see lots and lots of examples of chat GPT like technology that does not give you that answer that gives you every possible answer that one wants.
0:43:49 And what people will come to understand is that there is no magical AI system behind the box, but rather a system that allows you to ingest massive amount of data and depends on how you align it how you tune it what you wanted to generate.
0:43:59 It will generate a whole variety of human preferences and answers on topics that engage different perceptions of what the right answer is.
0:44:14 So it’s not as if there was this AI behind the scenes that is a single AI that has the manifestations of what you’re referring to as a godlike creature that is giving you this holistic comprehensive view of the world.
0:44:28 And it gives you always the right answer, but rather we’re going to come to immediately appreciate if people haven’t already done so that behind the black curtain is tons and tons of people and engineers and other people making choices as to what you get.
0:44:32 So I don’t think we’re going to get to that point that you’re referring to in AI.
0:44:43 Even immediately people will start seeing how much of a choice is the humans behind it on what that answer was up next on remarkable people.
0:44:49 The extreme sort of push of that dimension of it can create a very corrosive effect in society.
0:45:02 And so this is, I think, part of this debate and the tension around allowing the genius that we see in the human experience to express and manifest itself no matter how they acquired.
0:45:12 Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It’s found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
0:45:17 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:45:21 I worked at Apple. That’s the largest company I’ve ever worked at.
0:45:34 And the last sort of topic is it is just fascinating how IBM started so long ago and they have so many talented, smart people and they’ve impacted the world so much.
0:45:40 Who could have ever thought that one company could so impact the world?
0:45:46 And yet many people don’t even know what you’ve done. What a great company.
0:46:00 It’s true. I think it’s a good observation and your point is IBM is the only company on earth that has been involved in this field of computing for over 110 years.
0:46:09 So I like to say that the story of IBM is the story of computing and its relationship to professionals and the world of business and government.
0:46:18 If you look back at the history of it, even things as foundational to our modern democratic governance like the Social Security Administration.
0:46:31 Things like having implemented a census and being able to then allow, have a system that could send checks at the moment of retirement and that the numbers were correct and everybody got the right amount and so on.
0:46:41 Those were enablement technologies that created core pillars that are like the basis of what binds us across generations, for example in the crazy United States.
0:46:54 From there to sending a man to the moon and the Apollo program to their personal computer, which you have your own journey and your own history in Apple and the relationship with IBM to semiconductors to artificial intelligence and quantum.
0:46:58 So it has that long incredible arc of adapting.
0:47:08 We’ve not always done everything perfectly at any given inflection point, but it endures and it endures because of its commitment to R&D.
0:47:13 And because of its commitment to serving our clients and having that mission.
0:47:25 But you’re right that the person on the street, especially I would say following the vestiture of the personal computer, the PC business, they just don’t touch IBM in that way.
0:47:28 So the way they touch IBM is behind the scenes.
0:47:35 But if that doesn’t get explained, articulated or seen and people are busy, they have their daily lives, they don’t have to understand how everything works.
0:47:41 It’s sometimes very hard to appreciate it. I love the company and what it’s done and all the challenges.
0:47:45 But guy, I appreciate the sentiment that I think it should be something that is more celebrated.
0:47:53 But because it’s typically behind the scenes, it’s not top of mind in the same manner that other companies that you’re interacting daily on your consumer experience.
0:48:04 Well, there is no doubt in my mind that IBM may be the most underappreciated company in the world for what it’s done, truly.
0:48:12 And believe me, when I started in the computer business, the whole purpose of the Mac division was to put IBM out of business.
0:48:14 How naive we were.
0:48:18 At the time when you were doing that, it created a good healthy motivation, right?
0:48:22 Which produced an amazing thing, which is Apple.
0:48:23 My last question.
0:48:40 I found this one of the most interesting things that Jenny Romeri said, which is she did some kind of review of the open positions at IBM and decided that many did not actually require a college degree.
0:48:47 Now, I realize I’m speaking to someone with a PhD from MIT, so you’re the extreme of that.
0:48:55 But as you look over the sphere now, how important is formal education?
0:49:00 Well, one can answer that question in a variety of ways.
0:49:06 I’m going to continue to defend that formal education can be incredibly powerful and important.
0:49:08 So I guess part of the answer is it depends.
0:49:24 What Jenny was defending, which I think is right, is that one should be wary of credentialism and that what one should always be evaluating and measurement is the skill, is your ability to carry out whatever you’re seeking to do.
0:49:34 So if I am formulating, this is the kind of skills that I need to carry out this cybersecurity mission or to write code or sell and so on.
0:49:43 Be wary of associating your ability to do that with credentialism, which showing me the credential that does that.
0:49:55 I think that point is a really important point and we have done a lot of effort to remove arbitrary credentials when they’re not needed to be able to deploy to do the job and to hire and so on.
0:49:58 And I think that’s a super healthy important thing to do.
0:50:17 However, that is not to say that formal education is not important because formal education and the reason we have educational institutions and whether it’s in elementary school, middle school, high schools, college, graduate school is because it provides you an environment with teachers
0:50:25 and professors and fellow students to learn from one another and actually engage in the rigor of different academic disciplines.
0:50:28 That’s not always great. It has issues sometimes.
0:50:35 But I also defend that as an incredibly important repository of knowledge, of learning and expertise.
0:50:40 And I mean, in my context, obviously, I mean, you’re giving a different example.
0:50:44 I don’t think I could have done that sort of like on my own by osmosis.
0:50:51 I am the benefit of universities and the educational system that allowed me to become who I am.
0:50:54 And I think I’m the case like hundreds of millions of other people.
0:51:06 So that’s what I would say, but I think we run there’s a great book also related to this theme from Michael Sandel on the on something that is related to this, which is he called it the tyranny of meritocracy.
0:51:21 And in there, he talked about like the corrosive effect that we can even have as an expression of the limits of this when the people that go through the formal educational system, particularly elite institutions,
0:51:32 end up thinking that their success and their knowledge is solely theirs, that they deserve entirely this aspect of it because of a meritocratic system.
0:51:46 And they don’t appreciate the element also of luck and the element of privilege that might be present around that and that the extreme sort of push off that dimension of it can create a very corrosive effect in society.
0:51:57 And so this is I think part of this debate and the tension around allowing the genius that we see in the human experience to express and manifest itself no matter how they acquired.
0:52:08 I would say that one has to look no further than the U.S. Senate to understand the tyranny of what you just said.
0:52:21 So Dario, thank you so much. It’s been so interesting and you’ve you’ve about quintupled by understanding of quantum computing, although it started very low.
0:52:30 Thank you guys. Thank you for inviting me and I really appreciate everything that you do through your podcast and I’m being able to bring different ideas right to your audience.
0:52:45 So when we meet our maker, Dario, and she says, “Dario, you were wrong. I was AI. Don’t say I didn’t tell you, okay?”
0:52:50 At the very minimum, I would expect her to say, “I was AI and quantum.” How about that?
0:52:58 Okay. Okay. Putting all modesty aside.
0:53:08 I hope you enjoyed this little visit inside the research and development of IBM. What an awesome organization.
0:53:17 I’m from Silicon Valley and I’m so used to the story of two guys in a garage, two gals in a garage, a guy or gal in the garage.
0:53:28 But it’s not clear to me. Two guys, two gals, guy and a gal in a garage are going to master crypto and semiconductors and quantum computing and AI.
0:53:33 And that’s why the world needs people like Dario Gill.
0:53:43 I’m Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And as I’ve told you for hundreds of times, we’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:53:53 Which, by the way, has one real manifestation right now, which is Madison and I wrote a book called “Think Remarkable.”
0:54:04 I hope you will check it out. In fact, we have a special promo going on right now where, if you pre-order it before the launch date, March 6th,
0:54:11 we will immediately give you access to the online version so you can get a jump on being remarkable.
0:54:17 Just go to thinkremarkable.com to take advantage of the pre-order offer.
0:54:21 And now let me thank all the people that made this episode possible.
0:54:26 Marlon Delborg Delfis for introducing me to Dario.
0:54:31 Then there is Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, the sound engineering team.
0:54:42 Madison and Tessa Nizmer, the dynamic Nizmer sisters. Madison is producer and co-author. Tessa is researcher extraordinaire.
0:54:48 And finally, there’s Fallon Yates, Louise Magana, and Alexis Nishimura.
0:54:56 We are the Remarkable People team. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
0:55:01 This is Remarkable People.

0:00:13 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:16 Helping me today is Olivia Juliana.
0:00:19 She is a fierce Gen Z activist.
0:00:22 She champions equality and justice.
0:00:28 She has mobilized millions of people to defend civil rights across the United States.
0:00:35 What began as posting TikTok voting guides exploded into activism to preserve democracy,
0:00:40 preserve LGBTQ+ rights, and prevent climate change.
0:00:46 She has led a crowdfunding effort that raised over $2.5 million for abortion access after
0:00:49 a congressman attempted to publicly shame her.
0:00:55 Intimately familiar with mockery over her identities, Olivia wears her queer “woman
0:00:57 of color” status proudly.
0:01:04 Olivia symbolizes the rising tide of progressive youth wielding their choices and voices.
0:01:08 She proves that real change comes by turning pain into purpose.
0:01:19 I’m Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now here is the Remarkable Olivia Juliana.
0:01:23 Are you or anyone you know affected by this DACA ruling?
0:01:28 I don’t know anyone personally who’s been affected by it, most of my family have been
0:01:35 here for a couple generations now, but just reading about it, it’s so disheartening,
0:01:41 and on the one side, whenever I see something like this, I’m deeply upset by it because
0:01:48 it’s like, how are we going to continue to not treat people with basic dignity and humanity?
0:01:53 But the other side of me feels, I don’t think that relief is the right word, but it’s
0:02:00 I have this sense of I know it’s going to be okay because of how much politics has shifted
0:02:07 in terms of the amount of organizing and voter education I think is increasing as time goes
0:02:08 on.
0:02:12 I think that people are becoming more and more aware of what’s going on, and I think
0:02:16 that people are going to start actively fighting because of things like this more and more
0:02:20 than we’ve seen in the past, and so I’m hoping that this is now going to become a legislative
0:02:26 priority going into the next election cycle, not just for the president, but I hope that
0:02:31 it becomes an election priority for all of the people who are running for Congress of
0:02:37 understanding this needs to be a top line agenda item is immigration reform that is
0:02:43 coming from a lens of compassion and dignity rather than espousing great replacement theory
0:02:47 talking points that we hear so often from people on the Republican side of the aisle.
0:02:55 I’m fundamentally a marketing person, and forget that I’m like as blue as can possibly
0:03:01 be, but just intellectually, it just doesn’t make sense to me that you would say, okay,
0:03:09 so the population of America is getting more and more non white, I say, and women are getting
0:03:12 to be more and more powerful.
0:03:19 So why don’t we go and piss off all the women and all the Latinos, Latinas, and all the black
0:03:20 people.
0:03:21 That’s our future.
0:03:22 That’s our marketing strategy.
0:03:25 Piss off all the people who are growing and important.
0:03:27 I just don’t understand.
0:03:32 Yeah, and you bring it like a marketing strategy is I also think that we need to talk about
0:03:40 it from an economic point of view, which is America does not have the birth rates to meet
0:03:44 the work field that we are going to need in the next coming years.
0:03:50 And if we don’t have immigration, our economy is going to crash.
0:03:54 That is an undeniable fact that if we do not have people immigrating to the United States,
0:03:57 our economy is going to suffer.
0:04:01 And so you’re pissing off your constituency.
0:04:06 And now you’re trying to pass policies that actively hurt the economy, and I don’t think
0:04:09 people are pointing that fact out enough.
0:04:14 It’s contradictory and it doesn’t make sense, but it’s not because the their priority is
0:04:15 winning elections.
0:04:21 Their priority is upholding patriarchy and white supremacy and class inequality.
0:04:25 That’s why they’re not making sense is because all those other things don’t matter.
0:04:29 It’s about keeping their donors rich, about keeping themselves in power and about oppressing
0:04:34 people ultimately at the end of the day.
0:04:39 Thank you for explaining that to me because that was above my pay grade.
0:04:41 I need to get a little personal here.
0:04:49 Have you wrapped your head around a sitting congressman twice your age trying to humiliate
0:04:50 you?
0:04:52 How do you deal with something like that?
0:04:54 Oh, I was fine.
0:05:02 I think that and I’ve talked about this often is I think a lot of folks victimized me throughout
0:05:08 that story and I’m so humbled by people empathizing with me and being concerned, but I knew what
0:05:09 I was doing.
0:05:10 I work in politics.
0:05:16 At the time I was working at a youth led nonprofit as a political director and I baited Matt Gates.
0:05:21 I was just surprised that he actually took the bait and throughout that entire thing
0:05:23 I put out the original tweet.
0:05:27 I knew that if he saw it it would piss him off, but that’s what I wanted to do because
0:05:32 I wanted him to take the bite because I knew we’d be able to turn it to something positive.
0:05:36 I just didn’t think that he would be stupid enough to do it in such a dumb way.
0:05:44 I thought maybe I’d get a tweet but a whole speech and all this stuff and talking to reporters.
0:05:52 I don’t think that he navigated it as politically savvy as he could, but I always knew that’s
0:05:53 what I was going to do.
0:05:59 I was ready to go and take that and run into the stratosphere and this is why when this
0:06:05 all happened I got on Twitter and I said “thanks Matt Gates, you handed me a national platform
0:06:10 on a silver platter where I can now talk to the world about abortion rights in the year
0:06:14 that Roe was overturned” and that’s what happened.
0:06:18 I think it’s not just grasping with the fact that the sitting member of Congress came after
0:06:19 me.
0:06:20 I’ve grasped that.
0:06:21 That doesn’t surprise me.
0:06:23 People in the Freedom Caucus are literally children.
0:06:31 They don’t understand basic marketing or governmental functions, but what I still have trouble grasping
0:06:35 is how big of a story it actually was.
0:06:40 I know that we raised a lot of money but I have trouble acknowledging this was not just
0:06:42 a story that made headlines here.
0:06:46 This is a story that was written about all over the world.
0:06:52 There were articles in India, there are articles that were written in Dutch, Spanish, Australia.
0:07:01 It was a global story and I still don’t fully grasp that and it’s reflected in my social
0:07:05 media following analytics for my comments and it’s like why do I have so many people
0:07:11 from Canada and the United Kingdom and Australia following me and it’s because of that story
0:07:13 and I think it’s absolutely insane.
0:07:17 In other words you could not have planned it better.
0:07:18 I would say that.
0:07:20 I would say that’s fair to say.
0:07:22 So that dumbass did you a favor.
0:07:23 Exactly.
0:07:35 But as a technique, would you care to shed some light on how to make zingers?
0:07:38 Because man, you wiped the floor with him.
0:07:43 So you got any insights how to wipe the floor with people on social media?
0:07:47 I mean with people like Matt Gaetz, he’s an easy target.
0:07:50 He’s an alleged pedophile.
0:07:53 He has a horrible track record legislatively.
0:07:58 I mean the bottom line is typically I don’t like to resort to name calling or juvenile
0:07:59 tactics.
0:08:00 Keep it classy.
0:08:03 I don’t need to say that you’re a stupid idiot.
0:08:08 I think I would much rather be like okay Matt Gaetz, you are an alleged pedophile, you
0:08:14 are an ineffective lawmaker who has not been able to pass any notable pieces of legislation
0:08:18 in your tenure even though you’re a nepo baby who got your position because your dad has
0:08:20 money in a political position.
0:08:27 I’ve always found that the intellectual insults are so much more poignant and jabby than the
0:08:30 other ones and people are very receptive to them.
0:08:32 And Matt Gaetz wasn’t the first person who I’ve had run-ins with.
0:08:38 I had run-ins with the now impeached Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton.
0:08:40 I’ve had run-ins with Governor Glenn Yonkin.
0:08:46 I was routinely ratioing Mark Wayne, Nick Mullen, and all these other Republicans talking
0:08:50 about like you can’t say this because you voted no on this bill.
0:08:53 It’s just holding them accountable with their own actions I found is the most effective
0:09:01 way to get these people to shut up or to swing the political hammer in your favor.
0:09:08 You are their worst nightmare, I mean you are just everything that they stand against
0:09:09 basically.
0:09:11 I am.
0:09:15 That’s why we wanted you so bad on this podcast.
0:09:18 I actually talked about this, there’s an LA Times article out there that talks about
0:09:22 this exactly where the journalist asked me, she was like what do you think and I was like
0:09:26 I think that everything they say is projection.
0:09:30 I think the right specifically people like in the Freedom Caucus are constantly talking
0:09:34 about people they’re hypersensitive, they’re offended easily, they’re all these things
0:09:37 and I think that is just a confession on themselves.
0:09:42 They’re constantly whining about these culture war issues that nobody cares about because
0:09:44 it’s easier to do that than to actually do their job.
0:09:50 I think that people who are affiliated with me and like me, we’re a lot tougher than
0:09:54 these people are and I’ve faced battles a lot tougher than Matt Gaetz name calling me
0:10:01 in my life, that’s not a big deal to me and so I think ultimately they’re the whiny little
0:10:03 snowflakes that they like to say that we are.
0:10:06 I think that they’re thin skinned and that they can’t handle the heat.
0:10:12 So are you saying basically on a day to day basis the stupidity and the hatred you deal
0:10:16 with, it just rolls off your back and it energizes you?
0:10:17 Absolutely.
0:10:23 Hate comments regardless of who they’re from really do not bother me at all.
0:10:26 And how did you get to that point?
0:10:32 I grew up a plus size closeted Mexican girl in rural Texas, like I’ve been bullied since
0:10:39 I was like five years old and I don’t know what happened and especially being like Mexican
0:10:42 and anyone who’s Latino who hears this will agree with me.
0:10:46 When you’re a Mexican, the meanest people to you are your own family members.
0:10:53 I have been conditioned for this since I was a child, I would be at Christmas dinner and
0:10:57 my grandparents would be saying the most ruthless things to me.
0:11:01 Every insecurity that someone tries to point out at me online, my ideas have been pointing
0:11:03 out since I was five years old.
0:11:05 I’m like, I’m built for this.
0:11:06 It’s genetics.
0:11:09 I was built to take this kind of criticism.
0:11:16 Olivier, if this activism thing doesn’t work out, you should go up into, you should go
0:11:17 into stand up comedy.
0:11:19 I see a future for you.
0:11:24 Maybe sometimes I feel like working in activism and politics, I am doing stand up comedy because
0:11:30 I’m working with clowns constantly on the other side.
0:11:36 One of my theories in life is that a sense of humor is one of the most dependable signs
0:11:38 of intelligence.
0:11:39 I agree with that.
0:11:43 I think that we need more politicians who have a sense of humor.
0:11:47 I think it humanizes them and I think it makes people feel like they can open up and talk
0:11:49 about this kind of stuff more.
0:11:52 I think this goes back to a point I made a little bit earlier about, there are a lot
0:11:56 of Republicans out there who like me and it’s because most of the time I respond to a lot
0:11:58 of the criticism with humor.
0:12:03 I had a guy on Twitter the other day, he was trying to body shame me and I was like, alright,
0:12:04 that’s great Tommy.
0:12:06 Why don’t you come meet me in the weight room?
0:12:07 Let’s go work out together.
0:12:09 And I’m serious, let’s do it.
0:12:10 Let’s race.
0:12:12 I’ve challenged people to races.
0:12:14 I’ve challenged people to arm wrestling matches.
0:12:18 I’m like, if you wouldn’t be about it, then be about it because I’m about it and I can
0:12:19 do it.
0:12:23 What are we doing here?
0:12:25 I love when you talk gates.
0:12:31 I’m 5’11”, 6’4″ in heels and I do that because I want people like you to feel as small as
0:12:33 you are or something like that, right?
0:12:34 Yep.
0:12:40 What I thought it was, I wear them to remind small men like you of your place and it works.
0:12:41 It’s true.
0:12:46 I wear heels often in politics and it really does affect the way that men in politics treat
0:12:47 me.
0:12:48 This is a real thing.
0:12:49 It’s like a secret weapon.
0:12:53 I’ve said this before, in heels, I am taller than Ted Cruz.
0:12:58 If I ever meet him in person, I will actually be able to physically look down on him.
0:13:04 This is a real thing that I have consistently held to be a true fact.
0:13:09 I would pay to see that.
0:13:14 So you can look down on him both physically and intellectually, right?
0:13:15 Exactly.
0:13:17 You might have to go to Cancun to see him.
0:13:20 Yeah, Lord knows he’s not facing his constituents.
0:13:26 We’re going to really digress because I can just tell you’re that kind of person we can
0:13:27 digress.
0:13:30 I went to the University of Houston, which is not exactly Ivy League.
0:13:32 I don’t mean that as an insult.
0:13:33 That’s just a statement of fact.
0:13:37 But you ever wonder, this Pendejo, he went to Harvard Law School.
0:13:42 He went to Yale and Holly Gates.
0:13:44 All these people went to Ivy League schools.
0:13:48 Do you ever wonder what the hell happens to people in Ivy League schools?
0:13:49 Here’s the thing.
0:13:55 I actually think that Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are very intelligent people.
0:13:56 That’s the thing.
0:13:58 They are very, very smart.
0:14:06 I think that we do a disservice and downplay how dangerous they actually are when we act
0:14:09 as if they don’t know what they’re doing.
0:14:15 Like Ted Cruz is a moron if you’re somebody who is inside of politics.
0:14:20 If you’re somebody who, I call it inside or baseball, if you’re somebody who is in politics
0:14:22 and you’re listening to what you have to say, you’re like, this guy has no idea what he’s
0:14:23 talking about.
0:14:27 The reality is Ted Cruz did go to an Ivy League university.
0:14:28 He clerked for a Supreme Court justice.
0:14:31 He’s a very intelligent man.
0:14:36 He just chooses to act like he is not.
0:14:41 Because if he acts like he’s not, then we don’t see him as a legitimate threat when
0:14:50 the reality is Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are voracious at right-wing legislative strategy
0:14:56 and helping enact horrible policies that harm people, both federally and on a state level
0:14:58 on a consulting basis.
0:15:02 So that being said, I go to University of Houston, Victoria, I go to a satellite campus.
0:15:07 It’s not an Ivy League school by any means, but I think that’s just more reflective on
0:15:15 the fact that more people like me who have our political experience from tangible ground
0:15:22 work and growing up feeling policy failure need to be empowered so that we can say,
0:15:26 I don’t have a silver spoon in my mouth like some of these people and I see what they’re
0:15:31 doing and this is wrong and we need to do something to fix that.
0:15:35 So that being said, I think Ted Cruz is a very dangerous person.
0:15:38 I don’t think that he is just this moron who does silly stuff.
0:15:44 I think he’s really good at, okay, like yeah, Ted Cruz is online screaming about Bud Light
0:15:48 because he wants to get brownie points, but it’s okay, but let’s talk about the fact
0:15:54 that there are 7,000 Anheuser-Busch jobs in his constituency that he’s not taking into
0:15:55 account.
0:15:59 That is dangerous and it’s not because he’s not thinking about it.
0:16:02 It’s because he just doesn’t care to an aside.
0:16:10 Well, Olivia, you’re trying to tell me that I should believe that Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley
0:16:17 are so smart, that they purposely are doing what is seemingly stupid.
0:16:18 Don’t take it from me.
0:16:19 Take it from Mitt Romney.
0:16:24 Like this Atlantic Article that came out last night about Mitt Romney’s biography, Mitt
0:16:29 Romney says he believes Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to be two of the smartest people in
0:16:36 government and I think we’ve come to a point at least when it comes to very basic principles
0:16:41 and morals, I’m willing to listen to Mitt Romney when it comes to things like that because
0:16:48 he’s shown, I think, when it comes to basic foundations of government and of the constitution
0:16:51 that he’s willing to be on the right side of history.
0:16:55 So I’ll listen to him when he says that and I’ve thought that for a very long time.
0:17:00 I don’t think that somebody like Ted Cruz gets to the position that he’s been in by
0:17:01 failing upwards.
0:17:06 I think that he’s calculated and I think something else and you know, actually I’m so glad that
0:17:08 you brought this up.
0:17:13 Something that a lot of people don’t talk about is the fact that both Josh Hawley and
0:17:19 Ted Cruz have brilliant women behind them.
0:17:25 Ted Cruz’s wife is a Goldman Sachs bank-affiliated person who is largely known for being the
0:17:28 blunt of his political operation.
0:17:35 Josh Hawley’s wife is a very powerful attorney who argues anti-abortion cases in front of
0:17:36 the federal government.
0:17:40 Both of these men are not just legislators in the U.S. Senate.
0:17:45 They are married to very intelligent women who are also having conversations with them
0:17:50 about how to act in the U.S. Senate and no one ever talks about that.
0:17:56 These women have extremely successful careers that they are using and yielding to make these
0:18:02 men act on their behalf legislatively, on top of their own intentions while they hold
0:18:04 these positions of power.
0:18:09 Okay, Olivia, going forward, I’ll tell people that I believe that both of them are highly
0:18:15 intelligent with highly intelligent wives, but I really don’t believe that.
0:18:22 But it’s safer to say that and be wrong than to say they’re stupid and be wrong.
0:18:24 I think that’s very fair.
0:18:35 I think that’s a fair thing to say.
0:18:36 Here’s a funny story.
0:18:41 So I’m writing a book called “Think Remarkable” and it reflects the 200 interviews that I’ve
0:18:46 had for this podcast, as well as my 40 years of experience.
0:18:50 And along the way, I met this teacher named Kelly Gibson.
0:18:56 She’s a public school teacher outside of Oregon, 2,500-person city.
0:19:01 And she is one of the most remarkable people I’ve met in this podcast.
0:19:05 So I gave her the draft of the book and she comes back to me.
0:19:07 She goes, “You know, guy, I read the first half of your book.
0:19:12 I’m telling you, my students do not know anybody you cited.
0:19:13 They don’t know Jane Goodall.
0:19:15 They don’t know Kristi Amaguchi.
0:19:18 They don’t know Ronnie Lawd, Brandy Chastain.
0:19:19 They don’t know Waz.
0:19:21 They don’t know all these people.”
0:19:25 And I said, “Who am I supposed to get that they will pick up the book and say, ‘Shit,
0:19:27 I got to read this book?’”
0:19:29 And you know who she said?
0:19:30 Olivia Giuliana.
0:19:31 You’re kidding.
0:19:32 No, no, no.
0:19:38 And then, so first of all, I just to show you how open and transparent are.
0:19:41 I had to say, “Who is Olivia Giuliana?”
0:19:44 This is three months ago, okay?
0:19:47 And then I did research on you and I said, “Holy shit.
0:19:49 I could see why.
0:19:51 I could see why.”
0:19:53 That’s when we went on this mission to get you.
0:20:00 So I’m telling you all this because in my mind, you represent Gen Z for Baboomer here,
0:20:01 okay?
0:20:03 So you’re bringing me out of the dark ages.
0:20:09 So I want to know, what are the two or three most important issues to Gen Z?
0:20:15 This is a very layered question and I think that this plays into something that I think
0:20:23 is an inherent problem within democratic politics, is youth are often seen as a monolith.
0:20:30 And I think that there is this cookie cutter idea of, okay, if we want to empower Gen Z,
0:20:34 then we’re going to talk about abortion, gun violence, climate change.
0:20:37 That’s our messaging for them.
0:20:42 And I think that a lot of times that’s crafted around polling that comes out about young
0:20:45 people who were already voters.
0:20:52 And the reality is that there are millions of young people out there who are not politically
0:20:57 engaged because people are not meeting them where they are and they are not talking to
0:21:00 them about the issues that matter most to them.
0:21:05 That being said, I think that young people, young people are not just young people.
0:21:11 Young people are students, their parents, their workers, their renters, their union
0:21:18 organizers, their abortion rights activists, their caretakers for their family.
0:21:24 I think in the same way that we don’t treat millennials or Gen Xers or boomers as a monolith,
0:21:27 we understand the diversity in them.
0:21:32 We have to start understanding the diversity of young people and in particular the diversity
0:21:33 of Gen Z.
0:21:38 This is the most racially diverse, politically diverse, ideologically diverse generation we’ve
0:21:45 seen in a really long time and a lot of that is based in the different experiences our
0:21:48 generation has had compared to other generations.
0:21:53 So a sentence that I often say that people are mind blown about when they’re older is,
0:21:57 I have never lived in a world where 9/11 did not happen.
0:21:59 I was born after 9/11.
0:22:05 I was born into a world where the war on terror had already started, where I was growing up
0:22:11 in the midst of economic recessions, the election of Barack Obama with the plague of school
0:22:15 shootings and then you see a lot of people in my generation and our most on our most
0:22:21 formative years pre-adulted in high school, we’re taken out of school by a global pandemic.
0:22:26 So we’ve faced all these extremely unique generational issues, a lot of which are caused
0:22:30 by policy failure or policy inaction.
0:22:34 And then we’re told to just go live our lives in adulthood where it’s become increasingly
0:22:38 more difficult to afford a home, where it’s become increasingly more difficult to get
0:22:40 a college education.
0:22:44 And so we have no choice but to be politically engaged.
0:22:48 And for those who aren’t politically engaged, I think it’s not because they don’t care.
0:22:51 I think it’s because they don’t think it’ll make a difference.
0:22:58 And so when it comes to understanding Gen Z, the core principle is understanding that
0:23:03 we can’t just keep treating young people like they’re young people because the reality is
0:23:08 Gen Z at our age where we currently at are the most civically engaged generation we have
0:23:12 ever seen politically in terms of voting and in terms of voter education.
0:23:15 I know that was a very broad answer.
0:23:16 Let’s get out of the theoretical, right?
0:23:20 Joe Biden calls you up and says, Hey, I saw your post on threads.
0:23:22 How you said I’m a great president.
0:23:25 Help me get reelected, Olivia.
0:23:27 Come on board my campaign.
0:23:32 And you tell Joe Biden, of course, you say yes, but then what do you do?
0:23:33 What do you tell Joe Biden?
0:23:36 This is how to lock and load Gen Z.
0:23:43 I told Joe Biden to talk about, one, the contrast between what he has done and what
0:23:45 Republicans are doing and want to do.
0:23:50 So I say, okay, you need to talk about how all these major pieces of legislation that
0:23:54 you’ve passed affect the lives of young people.
0:23:58 You need to have young people talking about how it affects the lives of young people.
0:24:03 And so the story that I tangible use often is I was able to go to my first year of college.
0:24:08 I went to a community college because of the American Rescue Plan.
0:24:12 The American Rescue Plan paid my tuition my entire freshman year of college and gave me
0:24:17 enough money afterwards to buy my textbooks and supplies I needed for school.
0:24:19 That was done because of the American Rescue Plan.
0:24:25 It was also done because Democrats in the omnibus bill expanded Pell Grants.
0:24:30 You need to talk about the tangible legislative things that you have done to help Americans
0:24:35 and help them understand that the changes that they’ve seen either in their education
0:24:38 or community have come from legislation that you have passed.
0:24:41 That’s the first thing you would do.
0:24:46 The second thing you would do is we have to talk to young people about the economy.
0:24:52 And I actually had a meeting in the White House a couple of months ago where I specifically
0:24:57 said we need a youth economic agenda that is concentrated in this country.
0:24:59 Don’t talk about the economy broadly.
0:25:04 I need you to set forward specifically how you are going to economically empower young
0:25:09 people and how you have already laid the groundwork to do that because they have.
0:25:14 If we are real rebuilding the infrastructure in our communities, that affects the longevity
0:25:19 of young people going into older adulthood in terms of where are you going to establish
0:25:20 your family.
0:25:23 If we are talking about Pell Grant expansion, if we are talking about student loan forgiveness,
0:25:26 these are things that have already started happening economically.
0:25:28 The foundation has been laid.
0:25:30 You need to expand on it now.
0:25:32 You laid the bricks down.
0:25:35 Now we need to talk about how you are going to build the house and what you are going
0:25:36 to put inside of it.
0:25:40 So I would say talk about how are we going to empower young people in the economy because
0:25:46 it’s really hard to say hey, the economy is in great standing when there are a lot of
0:25:50 folks who can’t pay their rent and there are a lot of folks who are having trouble buying
0:25:51 groceries.
0:25:56 I understand as a political, I know that that’s not Joe Biden’s fault.
0:25:59 I know our supply chains are recovering from COVID.
0:26:04 I know that a lot of state legislatures are responsible for the issues that we are seeing
0:26:06 like low minimum wages.
0:26:09 I know that but it’s because that’s my job to know that.
0:26:16 You need to communicate what we need to do in order to empower people more financially
0:26:21 especially young people who are entering adulthood and I think that we are going to see more
0:26:26 executive action coming before the presidential election to do that but he has a record to
0:26:27 run on.
0:26:31 This isn’t 2020 where he is saying oh I am going to do all this for young people.
0:26:36 This is 2023 where he has already done things.
0:26:38 This is not about getting him to do things.
0:26:44 This is about marketing the fact that he has already started and if we want this progress
0:26:48 to continue we have to put him back in the White House and not just put him back in the
0:26:53 White House but I think the third thing and I think that this is the most crucial not
0:26:58 just for young people but for politics in general is getting people to understand the
0:27:02 dynamics of intergovernmental work.
0:27:08 We need people to understand that in order for us to rebuild our roads, to rebuild our
0:27:14 schools, to tangibly better our community that we are living in every day.
0:27:16 We need Joe Biden in the White House.
0:27:19 We need Democratic governors in the governor’s mansion.
0:27:22 We need state legislatures that are controlled by Democrats.
0:27:28 We need city councils and county commissions and mayors that are going to fulfill this
0:27:34 agenda and let that federal money run all the way down the stream until we can tangibly
0:27:36 see it in our community.
0:27:41 We need elected officials and people who are campaigning to talk about how they are going
0:27:46 to work with the elected officials that we see all the time in our communities to make
0:27:47 our lives better.
0:27:52 If I’m a regular person chances are I’m never going to meet Joe Biden but if I’m a regular
0:27:57 person living in Fort Bend County, Texas, there’s a good chance that I’m going to meet
0:28:02 my county commissioner or my county judge and I need to know that they’re going to be
0:28:08 able to take the funding that has been passed through Joe Biden’s White House and implement
0:28:11 changes in my community that I want to see done.
0:28:14 Okay, can I just ask you a dumb question?
0:28:15 Sure.
0:28:18 Have you ever had your IQ tested?
0:28:19 No.
0:28:25 I’m telling you, you are frickin’ men’s of material.
0:28:27 Thank you.
0:28:31 Olivia, you mark my words.
0:28:34 You will win a MacArthur Fellowship.
0:28:37 I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know what that is.
0:28:42 When they call you up and they say you’ve won a MacArthur Fellowship, you call me up
0:28:46 and I’ll explain it to you.
0:28:51 In the things that you just listed, none of them were, you know, talk smack about the
0:28:54 GOP, what they’re trying to do to you.
0:28:59 So are you saying keep the message Joe, completely positive, don’t talk about they took away
0:29:04 your abortion rights, they took away black history, they took away this?
0:29:10 No, I have a very basic equation that I have for all political issues, which is problem
0:29:12 plus hope equals change.
0:29:19 The problem is that a Donald Trump Supreme Court overturn Roe vs. Wade, that’s the problem.
0:29:25 The hope is that we elect two or three more Democratic senators who will abolish the filibuster
0:29:32 and codify Roe v. Wade through the United States Congress and put that bill onto the
0:29:36 desk of President Joe Biden and the changes we codify Roe v. Wade.
0:29:40 The problem is that Republicans are banning books in school.
0:29:46 The hope is that we have state boards of education and governor’s elections that are going to
0:29:50 happen that are going to change the dynamic of power to where then public schools are
0:29:53 no longer being attacked and books aren’t being banned.
0:29:56 You can’t just run campaigns based on fear.
0:30:01 Running campaigns based on fear is a Republican strategy that works because the Republican
0:30:05 Party is propped up by fear and propped up by oppression.
0:30:10 The Democratic Party is not propped up by fear and oppression, it’s propped up by hope
0:30:12 and systemic change.
0:30:16 And so we have to run on, here’s the problem and here’s how we’re going to fix it, because
0:30:20 if we run just on fear, we will lose every single time.
0:30:25 You are just a quote machine, my God, it’s like everything comes out of your mouth is
0:30:26 quotable.
0:30:29 Thank you, I try.
0:30:31 I want to meet your grandparents.
0:30:36 Here’s the funny thing, actually, I am an ideological anomaly in my family, I’m the
0:30:38 only Democrat.
0:30:42 Every person in my family is a conservative and the person who really has shaped my political
0:30:45 mind is my dad.
0:30:51 My dad is a John McCain Republican, I grew up in a very conservative Christian household,
0:30:55 Fox and Friends on the news every single morning, watched every single presidential election
0:31:01 all through my childhood, I self-identified as a Republican until I was about 14, and
0:31:06 when I got to high school, my freshman year is when Trump was sworn in.
0:31:12 And I joined my debate class and I had to start researching these fictional topics, but
0:31:16 I had to be able to argue both sides of the issue.
0:31:19 When I started doing that, I started realizing so many of the political things that I had
0:31:24 been taught were not factually correct, and I started switching and then eventually as
0:31:27 time went on, I became a Democrat.
0:31:34 But my dad, to this day, is the reason why I’m so voracious at understanding democratic
0:31:38 politics and understanding politics in general because my dad was a political science major
0:31:43 in college, but he ended up having to drop out of school to raise his family because
0:31:48 my mom got pregnant and he got hurt, he was on a football scholarship, so my dad had to
0:31:55 drop out of college, but he always kept and instilled in me that democracy and civic engagement
0:31:59 is extremely important and you need to be informed on it, to the point of, I think I
0:32:04 was a freshman or sophomore in high school and there was a school board election in my
0:32:07 city, and our city was totally flooded.
0:32:11 Our front yard was covered in water, it had just rained and rained and rained and rained,
0:32:16 and I watched my dad put on, I think they’re called Gators, which is a very country way
0:32:22 of saying, basically big rubber boots that go to your midsection, and he carried me to
0:32:25 the truck so that he could go vote in that school board election.
0:32:30 That is the level of importance around democracy and politics that has been instilled in me
0:32:32 from a very young age by my father.
0:32:39 Just FYI, we interviewed someone named John Conyers a few weeks ago, and he lived in the
0:32:46 projects, both parents crack addicts, and he joined the debate team in his high school,
0:32:51 became very close to his debate team coach, and that changed the arc of his life, so there’s
0:32:53 something to be said for debate.
0:33:01 You open another door for me, which is, can you explain to me how any Latino people can
0:33:04 be hardcore conservatives?
0:33:10 That just boggles my mind. Trump is saying that Latinos are rapists and murderers. How
0:33:14 can any Latino people possibly support somebody who says that?
0:33:19 I think it’s a much deeper, larger issue than people think.
0:33:24 Number one, the idea that there is a large swath of Latinos out there that are diehard
0:33:29 Republican voters is just factually incorrect. The data doesn’t match that. I think it is
0:33:35 a talking point that is pushed to try to change that narrative, because even if you look at
0:33:40 the governor’s election that just happened here in Texas last year, Greg Abbott had his
0:33:45 celebration in South Texas, which is predominantly Latino, but the reality is that South Texas
0:33:51 overwhelmingly voted blue in that election, but as far as what goes, when we take immigration
0:33:58 out of the equation, if we’re talking about what matters to Latinos the most in terms of
0:34:07 maybe older Latinos who are raised in more conservative areas, it tends to be the economy.
0:34:13 What we’ve seen happen, and I believe that this is again a tool of white supremacy, is
0:34:20 we have seen marginalized communities be turned against each other in the name of upholding
0:34:26 white supremacy. I think that’s reflected by the census, and if you’re like, what does
0:34:35 that mean? In the US census, in the racial categories, if you are somebody who is Latino,
0:34:40 you are considered to be white. But if you look at my father and you look at my family
0:34:46 members, it is very evident that they are not white people. They are not white. They do
0:34:51 not benefit from white privilege. They are darker skinned people who face the discrimination
0:34:58 based on that fact. But because of how white supremacy operates, when it feels its power
0:35:05 weakening, it expands. So that’s why if you look back to when America was found and all
0:35:10 this stuff, all of these ethnic groups were discriminated against. Latinos were discriminated
0:35:14 against, black Americans were discriminated against, Native Americans were discriminated
0:35:20 against, but as coalitions of communities of color started to work together, it was
0:35:26 then necessary for white supremacy to maintain its power for it to expand its scope. And
0:35:33 that includes bringing in Latino demographics to continue to establish their power. When
0:35:39 we talk about how can Mexican people support this, I think that plays a part in it is there
0:35:45 is a perception to some Latinos that they’re in the inside. Like they’re part of the in-game.
0:35:50 Like we’re not like the other marginalized communities. But I think that there’s this
0:35:57 other part of it that I’ve seen in my own family of I came here legally and I didn’t
0:36:04 have help and I had to struggle and scrape by to get to where I am. So I don’t think
0:36:09 that anyone else should have it easier than I did. And I think that’s this toxic mentality
0:36:14 that doesn’t just affect the Latino community, but affects older generations as well. They
0:36:18 think, well, if I had to struggle, everybody else did too. And I don’t think that you shouldn’t
0:36:22 have had to struggle. You shouldn’t have had to deal with all those things. So I think
0:36:29 a lot of it is based in wanting proximity to power. I think that it is the fact that
0:36:34 for one, I don’t think that the Democratic Party has done near as much genuine outreach
0:36:40 to Latino as they should. But I also think a lot of it is based in this kind of idea
0:36:46 of why you should have to work too. So it’s a very complex issue, but the reality is most
0:36:51 Latino people are Democrats. They vote for Democrats. And for those who don’t vote, because
0:36:55 there are a lot of Latinos out there who do not vote, I think it’s because people haven’t
0:37:00 asked them to. They haven’t asked. They assume. And I think that that’s a larger problem in
0:37:05 Democratic politics in general is the assumption that marginalized communities will vote for
0:37:11 you. I don’t think that that’s true. I think that every voter should be campaigned to every
0:37:17 voter should have a genuine dialogue and opportunities open to them. And I think that if we start
0:37:20 seeing that more and more, and I think we have started seeing that more than more. And someone
0:37:25 who I point to who I think did a great job was Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, the more
0:37:28 and more engaged, I think we’ll see these communities start to be.
0:37:36 So for boomers who in my mind, we blew it. And now it’s your turn. Me and Mitt Romney,
0:37:43 we agree on that. It is your turn to run this country. So what can boomers like me do to
0:37:44 help you?
0:37:50 So first, I think for a context, we have to understand that, yes, I work in politics now,
0:37:57 like this is my job, but I started in abortion activism work. The history of the abort anti-abortion
0:38:04 movement is that organizers before Ronald Reagan was elected president, started organizing
0:38:10 in city councils and state legislatures. They started local in organizing the anti-abortion
0:38:16 movement. And now we’ve seen that scale up to nationally anti-abortion organizing. And
0:38:21 it was successful. They worked for 50 years to get Roe v. Wade overturned. On the counter
0:38:28 side of that, I think in order to counteract a lot of the things that we’ve seen, we have
0:38:33 to tackle it from a federal perspective, but we also have to invest in long-term local
0:38:38 organizing for older folks who what can we do to make a difference? I think what you
0:38:44 can do to make a difference always is financially, obviously, if you have money, giving the federal
0:38:48 candidates is really important. Yeah, I don’t think that Joe Biden is exactly hurting for
0:38:55 cash, but I know a lot of state legislators in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee,
0:39:01 Arizona that are strapped that are running an elections that could be winnable if they
0:39:07 had the money, but they don’t. So I think start investing in local races across the
0:39:13 country, state legislators, city councils, county commissions. I think that there is
0:39:22 a real opportunity for Democrats to set the precedent now, so that 20, 30 years from
0:39:31 now, because mark my words, 20 to 30 years from now, there will be another surge of right
0:39:36 wing extremism. And we need to build the foundation now to be able to counteract that.
0:39:42 And I say that because books are being taken out of schools. The history of the children
0:39:50 are being taught is different than what actually happened. We are actively seeing history be
0:39:55 whitewashed and parts of it be erased in public schools. It’s happening in Florida right now.
0:40:04 On top of that, social media has led to the radicalization of a large swath, multi-generational
0:40:12 swath of men becoming radicalized to accept and espouse white supremacist ideas, patriarchal
0:40:19 ideas and classist ideas. And I fundamentally believe that 20 to 30 years from now, when
0:40:25 these teenagers and these children who are seeing these things online, who are being
0:40:31 radicalized, who are not being taught the truth about history, come to a voting age and come
0:40:36 to the age that they are the people who are in representative jobs, like they are the
0:40:40 candidates running for these offices. We are going to have to combat that. And I’ve said
0:40:47 that I fully believe that we are going to have another Ronald Reagan-like era happen
0:40:52 if we do not set the foundation to counteract it right now. It’s not just about combating
0:40:58 Republican extremism that we are seeing in the year of 2023. It is about setting the
0:41:03 foundation and a protective layer around democracy for the issues that we are going
0:41:09 to see in 2053. Up next on Remarkable People. All through high school, I was raised in a
0:41:13 single parent household. You know, my dad was the one taking care of me. Throughout
0:41:18 my childhood, I faced, if it’s an issue, you can think of, I dealt with it. I dealt with
0:41:25 watching people in my immediate family deal with drug addiction. I watched my parents
0:41:31 freak out financially. I’ve been evicted from multiple houses for my childhood. Even
0:41:35 into high school, I didn’t know how I was going to pay for college. Become a little
0:41:41 more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It’s found on Apple Podcasts or wherever
0:41:50 you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:41:59 So what’s the Olivia Giuliana top three tips in utilizing social media to effectuate change?
0:42:06 Number one is, I think that a broad coalition is best. I think we see this online a lot
0:42:13 is the left online at least eats our own a lot. And I’m guilty of this. I’ve done in
0:42:19 the past and I’ve reflected on this. I think that whether you are somebody who is more
0:42:25 ideologically aligned with Joe Biden, whether you are somebody who is more ideologically
0:42:31 aligned with Bernie Sanders, or whether you are somebody who is more ideologically aligned
0:42:38 with Stacey Abrams or Elizabeth Warren. At the end of the day, we all agree on the core
0:42:46 tenements. We agree public education should be protected. We agree that individuals should
0:42:51 have the ability to make decisions about their own body. We agree that we should make voting
0:42:57 easier. We agree that immigrants should be treated with humanity and dignity. We agree
0:43:07 about all these things. And I think if we don’t cast a broad net, then we are hurting
0:43:12 more than we are helping. I think that we understand we can have these kind of dynamic
0:43:17 conversations, but I think that there is so much. I’m right. You’re wrong. That’s not
0:43:23 how we affect change. That is not how we organize together. So number one is cast to cast a
0:43:28 wide net. Don’t alienate people because you disagree on the semantics, even though you
0:43:36 disagree on the core principles. Number two is be clear about what it is you want to accomplish.
0:43:41 If I want to fundraise for abortion, then I’m going to just flat out say I’m fundraising
0:43:46 for abortion because Matt Gaetz attacked me. I’m not going to say, “Oh, I support abortion.
0:43:52 That’s it.” Every single time you have attention, that is an opportunity to catalyze change.
0:43:59 Every single time I’ve had eyes on me, I’ve thrown it to do something else. So for example,
0:44:02 when the Matt Gaetz thing happened, which I baited him, which is another strategy that
0:44:06 you can use if you’d like, which is baiting prominent members of Congress and the Freedom
0:44:14 Caucus. It’s too easy. When I had the attention, I did two things. A lot of people talk about
0:44:22 the abortion fundraising. Not a lot of people talk about the fact that I actively took that
0:44:28 to highlight races and elections that were important to the pro-choice movement. I put
0:44:34 out a letter with a list of elections that I thought were fundamentally important to
0:44:42 protecting abortion rights across the country. So I had Tony Evers, JV Pritzker, Josh Shapiro,
0:44:49 Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rourke, Charlie Christ, Val Demings, John Fetterman. I had a laundry
0:44:54 list of people. And each state that I put on there, it had the Senate candidate or the
0:45:00 governor candidate, Attorney General Lieutenant Governor, every single one of them. And then
0:45:05 from there, it made people look into these races. Okay, this girl who’s doing this abortion
0:45:10 work is talking about that’s probably important. We saw, I have had candidates tell me that
0:45:17 after I put those letters out, they saw a surge in volunteers and a surge in donations.
0:45:22 Because when you have attention, don’t just use it as, okay, I’m going to use this attention
0:45:28 for narrative change, use it for narrative change and tangible change, direct people
0:45:32 to an action, because people want to help, they want to do something, but they don’t
0:45:37 know how. And that would lead me to the third point, which is when you do have an action,
0:45:42 make sure that it’s something that people can do. So it’s easy for me to ask people
0:45:47 to donate to abortion funds. It’s easy for me to ask people to text bank for candidates
0:45:52 like Raphael Warlock. That’s easy. And because it’s an easier ask, people are more inclined
0:45:57 to do it. Even if the ask is retweeting to raise awareness, retweet this so that we have
0:46:02 people understand that this is an issue we need to be paying attention to. Always ask
0:46:08 people for something and make the ask as easy as you possibly can. And the fourth thing
0:46:14 is be honest and intentional about what it is you’re trying to do and how it’s going
0:46:19 to tangibly affect people’s lives. I’m trying to think of a good example for this. Okay.
0:46:25 Use your personal stories to motivate people to do stuff. On my birthday last year, I
0:46:29 was turning 20 years old. I have this audience. It’s okay. What am I going to do? On my birthday
0:46:33 last year, Raphael Warlock was running for reelection in the U.S. Senate. He had a runoff
0:46:40 election. I said, okay, guys, I’m turning 20. If you want to give me a birthday present,
0:46:46 donate to Senator Warlock’s reelection campaign. Just from doing that on my socials, asking
0:46:52 people to send me a birthday present, I was able to raise $55,000 for Raphael Warlock’s
0:46:58 campaign. I think that the key is keep your coalition broad, have tangible actions that
0:47:05 are easy tied to your messaging, and use your personal relatable stories to motivate people.
0:47:08 And then you will be able to create tangible change.
0:47:17 What is the essence of Olivia Giuliana? How do people wrap their mind around you? What
0:47:28 are you? Honestly, I think that the last couple of years of my life have not been anything
0:47:36 I ever expected them to be. I think that my childhood shaped a lot of who I am as a person
0:47:43 and as an individual. Like I said, I grew up working class, kid, rural Texas. My parents
0:47:48 got divorced when I was 14. All through high school, I was raised in a single parent household.
0:47:54 My dad was the one taking care of me. Throughout my childhood, if it’s an issue, you can think
0:47:59 of, I dealt with it. I dealt with watching people in my immediate family deal with drug
0:48:06 addiction. I dealt with watching my dad having to ration insulin because he couldn’t afford
0:48:14 his medication. I watched my teachers work second jobs to be able to continue to teach.
0:48:21 I watched my parents freaked out financially. I’ve been evicted from multiple houses through
0:48:26 my childhood. Even into high school, I didn’t know how I was going to pay for college. I
0:48:32 was accepted to a couple of really good schools because I worked my ass off in high school
0:48:37 because no one in my immediate family has a college degree. Two of my sisters had to
0:48:43 drop out of high school to take care of not just our family but of themselves. I worked
0:48:48 my ass off through high school senior year on a four-point skill. I had a 3.68 GPA. I
0:48:54 was class president, senior student council president, FCA president, yearbook editor,
0:48:58 prom queen. I did every extracurricular I could think of. I took every AP class that
0:49:04 was available to me to work my ass off to maybe have the possibility of going to a school
0:49:09 like rice, of going to a school like Baylor, going to a school like UT, and at the end
0:49:14 of the day I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t afford to go to those
0:49:23 schools and so I enrolled in community college and I let what had been for my entire childhood,
0:49:29 the dream I had, slip away because I knew it was not realistic for me to attain. And
0:49:33 so through my childhood and through my own experiences and also listening to the experience
0:49:40 of my grandfather, growing up they were so poor that they literally had dirt floors in
0:49:46 their house. My grandfather telling me stories of living along the banks of the Rio Grande
0:49:50 River as a kid and how they would sleep in the trees because they didn’t have anywhere
0:49:56 else to go. And so listening to him and then my lived experiences of watching all these
0:50:00 things and then all the generational experiences I’ve had I think have kind of shaped me into
0:50:08 who I am today. And I think that the core of who I am and what I do is I’m a fourth
0:50:15 generation Texan. My family has been here for over a hundred years and I’ve watched
0:50:22 how hard they have worked to establish themselves here and how hard my grandparents worked and
0:50:29 my great grandparents worked to make something of themselves and their families. And I love
0:50:34 my home, I love where I’m from and I can’t give up on it. I think a lot of people look
0:50:40 at me as oh she’s in politics like my number one priority always has and always will be
0:50:48 to make Texas what my great grandparents believed it was when they immigrated here. They immigrated
0:50:56 here because they saw Texas as a ticket to their American dream and I don’t think that
0:51:01 they ever got in the position to achieve it. And so I talk about Texas being important
0:51:07 to me. One of the most famous politicians and icons to ever come out of Texas was Congresswoman
0:51:12 Barbara Jordan and she was the first black woman from the South elected to Congress.
0:51:18 She was on the committee that impeached Nixon and held his feet to the fire and she is just
0:51:24 this powerhouse and she has this quote where she says I believe it is in the soil and spirit
0:51:30 of Texas that gives me the ability as an individual to accomplish anything. That’s not exactly
0:51:36 it, I’m paraphrasing, but I often say my great grandparents immigrated here. They were
0:51:43 literally working in the fields to make money and to make ends meet. So it was literally
0:51:49 in the fields and in the soil of Texas that my great grandparents planted what I call
0:51:56 the seeds of my American dream which is the fact that a girl who grew up in rural Texas
0:52:02 who couldn’t afford to go to college in the span of two or three years has now met the
0:52:08 president of the United States, has had meetings in the White House and I’ve gone from not
0:52:14 having any idea if I’d economically survive and have a future not just in politics but
0:52:20 just in life. I was in college to be a teacher before all this happened. But now I am financially
0:52:27 secure. I have a seat at the table and I can fight for the Texas and the America that my
0:52:32 grandparents envisioned when they came here because of the work that not only my family
0:52:38 did but generations of activists and organizers have been fighting to achieve. So in the essence
0:52:46 of who is Olivia Juliana, I’m just a young woman who really loves her home and really
0:52:53 loves her family and wants to give people the opportunities and fulfill the promise
0:53:01 that America itself made in the Constitution to all people. Let me be perfectly clear.
0:53:08 I think that people like Olivia Juliana are going to save the United States. If not democracy
0:53:17 in general. I’m Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:53:23 Speaking of, Madison and I have completed a book called Think Remarkable. Nine paths
0:53:30 to transform your life and make a difference. One of the people featured in our book is,
0:53:37 of course, Olivia Juliana. We hope that you’ll check it out. I guarantee you it will help
0:53:44 you make a difference and be remarkable. Now let me thank the rest of the Remarkable People
0:53:53 team. Matt Asanismar, co-author and producer, Tessa Nismar, researcher, proof reader, copy
0:54:01 editor, the sound design team, Shannon Hernandez and Jeff C. And finally, Fallon Yates, Alexis
0:54:10 Nishimura and Luis Magana. This is your Remarkable People team. And in 2024, we’re going to help
0:54:22 you transform your life and make a difference. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:16 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:20 Helping me today is Thor Peterson.
0:00:23 I hope it’s Peterson, not Pedersen.
0:00:28 I should have asked him in an interview but I completely forgot and I cannot definitively
0:00:34 find the answer because all the YouTube videos in which he’s talking, he never says his
0:00:35 last name.
0:00:40 Alas, that is probably not the biggest problem we face in the world.
0:00:43 So let me tell you about Thor.
0:00:45 He is a Danish adventure.
0:00:51 He made history by visiting every country in the world without flying.
0:00:59 His decade-long journey is a testament to human connection and oh my god, the spirit
0:01:01 of exploration.
0:01:09 His blog, Once Upon a Saga, chronicles his adventures across all these countries, oceans,
0:01:10 war zones.
0:01:18 He even got married atop Mount Kenya in 2013 and throughout his travels, Thor engaged with
0:01:25 local communities, shared stories and really fostered cultural unity.
0:01:32 He also shone a light on the critical yet often unseen work of the Red Cross societies.
0:01:39 Thor’s Odyssey demonstrates our world’s deep interconnectedness and it echoes his belief
0:01:43 that a stranger is a friend you’ve never met before.
0:01:52 Join me, Guy Kawasaki, the Remarkable People podcast as we delve into the incredible, remarkable
0:01:59 journey of Thor, Peterson or Pedersen who visited every country in the world without
0:02:07 flying.
0:02:15 My wife is Danish so I’ve had many an evil skiver in my life.
0:02:17 What does that mean?
0:02:20 You don’t know what an evil skiver is?
0:02:21 Maybe I’m saying it wrong.
0:02:27 No, I’m sure you were saying it exactly as supposed to be said but I’m just not from
0:02:31 the US and I speak Danish on a day-to-day basis.
0:02:34 Wait, I’m having an out-of-body experience.
0:02:39 An evil skiver is that thing that’s like little donut pancakes.
0:02:41 That’s a Danish thing.
0:02:44 Okay, now I know what you’re saying.
0:02:47 No, your pronunciation is very good.
0:02:55 It might be a different dialect but where I come from I say evil skiver.
0:02:59 That’s Hawaiian pigeon saying evil skivers.
0:03:02 Yeah, I wasn’t ready for you speaking Danish just yet.
0:03:06 I’m very impressed.
0:03:12 First I want to start way back when and I read that you were the lifeguard at the Royal
0:03:14 Palace.
0:03:16 What the hell kind of job is that?
0:03:18 Tell me about that.
0:03:24 Denmark is a cute little country with a very small population and very old traditions in
0:03:31 some directions at least and within our military service you can get drafted or not and that’s
0:03:36 through a lottery so you put your hand into a box and you pick a number and if the number
0:03:40 is low then you have to do your military service and if the number is high you can
0:03:45 go out and get a job if that’s what you want and my number was really low and then I signed
0:03:50 up for what I thought would be the most interesting branch within the Danish military which is
0:03:57 to stand as a guard in front of the Queen’s Palace and that’s in an olden day outfit so
0:04:02 I think that uniform has not been updated certainly for a very long time.
0:04:07 It’s with the bare skin hat on top of your head and it wouldn’t be good for warfare.
0:04:10 They would spot you a mile away.
0:04:13 It looks nice though.
0:04:19 So you get drafted by the Danish army and they say you can either go fight the Russians
0:04:21 or you can stand in front of the palace.
0:04:23 You get that kind of choice.
0:04:30 So within our military service you can go Air Force, you can go Army, you can go Navy
0:04:36 and then if you feel like it you can do something a little bit more special so that’s actually
0:04:42 a 12 month military service duration which is longer than any of the others but that’s
0:04:46 the kind of country that they’re in lies the problem.
0:04:53 So when I read that in your bio I read Lifeguard when Madison and I or people basically in
0:04:59 California Hawaii when we read Lifeguard we think swimming pool or ocean.
0:05:01 You meant palace guard right?
0:05:03 Yes, it’s a palace guard.
0:05:09 Oh, I thought you were watching the Danish princesses swim for your military duty.
0:05:14 You were picturing Danish bay watch.
0:05:18 So you’re the Danish hassle wharf?
0:05:24 Yes, not as buff as him though.
0:05:32 First serious question is you’ve been all over the world obviously and I want you to
0:05:37 explain because I don’t think many people understand it’s not clear I understand.
0:05:41 What exactly does the Red Cross do around the world?
0:05:47 I’m very happy that you asked me that question because I’ve done a great deal of interviews
0:05:50 and most they skipped directly over that.
0:05:56 I was given the honor of traveling as a goodwill ambassador of the Danish Red Cross which
0:06:02 is the National Society of Denmark and the National Society of the US would be the American
0:06:06 Red Cross and the National Society in Syria would be the Syrian Red Crescent and so on
0:06:12 and so forth and the Red Cross is the world’s largest humanitarian organization and found
0:06:18 in 192 countries around the world so that’s basically every country and my job was to
0:06:24 promote the humanitarian efforts and raise money and awareness.
0:06:31 I donated blood, I shared as much as I possibly could about the Red Cross throughout the entire
0:06:36 journey and if you have any specific questions about the Red Cross then I’m more than happy
0:06:38 to answer them.
0:06:42 So let’s say there’s a tsunami or something.
0:06:45 What does the Red Cross do?
0:06:48 It would very much depend on the country.
0:06:54 So the Red Cross plays an auxiliary role to the government so in some countries the government
0:07:00 might be very strong and there would be less of a need for the Red Cross and in some countries
0:07:04 the Red Cross would take over the entire operation.
0:07:10 So the backbone of the Red Cross would be volunteers and within a tsunami for sure lots
0:07:17 and lots of volunteers would be sent in and they would immediately start to help those
0:07:20 that are affected by the tsunami.
0:07:24 Maybe people, they cannot return to their homes, maybe they need a hotel, maybe they
0:07:31 need a shelter, they would set up shelters, they would hand out food and blankets, clothing,
0:07:37 sanitary pads, toothbrushes, soap, anything that you can imagine to get people back on
0:07:38 their feet.
0:07:44 In some cases the Red Cross might contact your employer on your behalf and explain to your
0:07:49 employer that your life has been destroyed because you might be dealing with trauma or
0:07:54 something else and they might have arrangements with hotels and they would set you up and
0:07:57 they would contact insurance and help you.
0:08:02 The Red Cross is there in place to help people and the level of the Red Cross engagement
0:08:05 really depends on the country.
0:08:12 And let’s suppose that you’re with the Danish Red Cross and you’re sitting in, I don’t know,
0:08:17 Copenhagen and you’re drinking beer and then there’s a tsunami in Indonesia.
0:08:18 So what?
0:08:24 Does your phone ring and they say Thor get on a plane, we got to go to Indonesia, how
0:08:26 does it work?
0:08:32 That could happen actually because I was trained to be within the ERU, I was a logistics delegate
0:08:33 within the ERU.
0:08:37 The ERU is the emergency response unit.
0:08:42 So that’s a team of specialists that are trained to be deployed on short notice.
0:08:43 So that could very well happen.
0:08:51 Then I would get deployed along with some doctors, some engineers, some technicians, some nurses
0:08:58 probably and then we would set up camp near the area in Indonesia and then we would go
0:09:04 to work immediately rebuilding the country and supporting the national society of Indonesia.
0:09:10 In that case, the Danish Red Cross would be a PNS which is a participating national society.
0:09:14 But the more likely scenario I would imagine is that the Danish Red Cross would immediately
0:09:20 start raising funds within Denmark and then all these funds would be directed to Indonesia.
0:09:28 And who decides whether it’s the American Red Cross or the Danish Red Cross or the Finnish
0:09:31 Red Cross, who gets involved?
0:09:35 Does the people in Thailand say, let’s call our buddies in Denmark or let’s call our
0:09:39 buddies in New York, who gets the call?
0:09:41 Yeah, that’s another good question.
0:09:47 So the way it works is that if national society is not strong enough to handle the emergency
0:09:51 on its own, then it would put out an appeal.
0:09:56 And then participating national societies, PNS’s, they will answer that appeal.
0:10:01 So it might be whoever’s already within the country, it might be that in Indonesia, that
0:10:03 the American Red Cross is already there operating.
0:10:10 And then it’s easy for them to deploy or redirect some of their efforts to the tsunami.
0:10:14 It could also be that you would have a country traveling across half the planet to go and
0:10:15 help and assist.
0:10:20 So within the Red Cross, you have the IFRC, the International Federation of the Red Cross,
0:10:24 which is headquartered in Geneva in Switzerland.
0:10:27 And they help coordinate in these cases.
0:10:34 So when this appeal is raised, then the IFRC would probably reach out and find appropriate
0:10:37 national societies to go in and help and support.
0:10:39 And the IFRC also has its own funds.
0:10:46 Okay, you about quintupled my knowledge of how the Red Cross works in the last 60 seconds.
0:10:47 Okay.
0:10:49 Plus, I can tell you a fun fact.
0:10:56 If I wanted to pursue a Guinness World Record within the Red Cross, then I could probably
0:11:01 be awarded the one person on this planet who has visited the Red Cross in the most amount
0:11:07 of countries, because I did visit the Red Cross in 198 countries around the world throughout
0:11:08 this journey.
0:11:09 Wow.
0:11:11 So that’s a good segue.
0:11:14 So explain what you did.
0:11:15 Yes.
0:11:22 So back in 2013, I found out that no one in history had gone to every country in the world
0:11:24 completely without flying.
0:11:27 And that basically infected me.
0:11:31 I just couldn’t shake the idea when it grew and it grew within me.
0:11:36 And I spoke to friends and I spoke to family and no one I spoke to had the same interest
0:11:38 within the topic as I did.
0:11:43 But I was smitten and I eventually started planning.
0:11:45 There was a wonderful woman within my life.
0:11:48 I’m happy to say that today she’s my wife.
0:11:52 But back then she was my girlfriend and we had a talk about how long we thought this
0:11:53 would take.
0:11:54 And I planned it out.
0:12:00 I did the logistics, I raised the funds for it, partnered up with companies and set out
0:12:07 on the 10th of October 2013 at 10.10 am thinking it would take four years to visit every country
0:12:10 in the world completely without flying.
0:12:14 And it got very complicated, very fast.
0:12:15 And sometimes it was easy.
0:12:16 Sometimes it was hard.
0:12:22 It was by far the biggest ordeal I’ve ever had within my lifetime.
0:12:28 It ended up taking nine years, nine months and 16 days in part because of the global
0:12:34 pandemic, in part because conflict and strife broke out in certain countries and regions,
0:12:40 in part because I was sick, in part because of the Ebola epidemic, which I think most
0:12:45 people might have forgotten somewhere behind the global pandemic.
0:12:48 But yeah, I was delayed in many places around the world.
0:12:56 And when you were stuck in Hong Kong for two years, what did you do in Hong Kong for two
0:12:57 years?
0:12:58 Yeah.
0:13:04 So, I didn’t know it was going to be two years.
0:13:09 When the virus broke out in Wuhan, I was on board a container ship heading towards Hong
0:13:10 Kong.
0:13:14 And I was blissfully unaware about the outbreak.
0:13:17 And then when we reached Hong Kong, I went up on the bridge and I was standing next to
0:13:18 the captain.
0:13:21 And I saw the captain was wearing a face mask.
0:13:24 And I look at him and I asked what’s going on and he handed me a face mask and he said,
0:13:28 “You better put this on, there’s been a virus outbreak in Wuhan.”
0:13:29 And I say, “Okay.”
0:13:30 So, what’s Wuhan?
0:13:32 And he says, “That’s the city in China.”
0:13:35 And I say, “Okay, how far away is that?”
0:13:37 And he says, “That’s more than a thousand kilometers away.”
0:13:42 I’m sorry, you might have to calculate in two miles on that.
0:13:44 But so, it’s really far away.
0:13:49 And I figured, I think most people would, that would never have anything to do with me.
0:13:53 That would be a local incident in the city, very far away from where I was.
0:13:58 And I entered Hong Kong where I was supposed to be for four days, just for transit between
0:13:59 two ships.
0:14:03 And then eventually, those four days were extended to 11.
0:14:08 And then eventually, countries started closing their borders and I couldn’t get on board
0:14:09 ships.
0:14:12 And then I was in Hong Kong for a duration unknown.
0:14:16 And what I did was network, and I networked and I was shaking hands and meeting people
0:14:22 and sending emails and calling, trying to find out who could help me on a ship and get
0:14:24 me to the next country.
0:14:30 And after a good 11 months of networking, Hong Kong immigration said that I had to get
0:14:36 a job or get married to someone in Hong Kong or start studying, but I couldn’t keep extending
0:14:37 my visa.
0:14:40 So I got a job and I worked for the Danish Siemens Church.
0:14:44 I was an assistant servicing container ships and seafarers.
0:14:45 They couldn’t leave the ships.
0:14:47 They were quarantined on board the ships.
0:14:51 So I could go shopping in Hong Kong for anything they needed and bring it to the ships.
0:14:54 I could also help and support the Danish community in Hong Kong.
0:14:59 There’s a bit more than a handful of Danish people, about 300 Danish people living in Hong
0:15:00 Kong.
0:15:03 And they were missing all sorts of Danish delicacies.
0:15:07 So I imported that and I was selling it out of the church to fund the activities.
0:15:11 And I did a lot of hiking, Hong Kong is 75% nature.
0:15:17 So I took to the mountains to get some fresh air and taken the view of the beautiful territory,
0:15:18 which is Hong Kong.
0:15:22 Yeah, I made a lot of good friends, a lot of collaborations, I’ve done many interviews
0:15:23 while in Hong Kong.
0:15:30 Suddenly press started taking interest in this man who was only nine countries from becoming
0:15:36 the first to reach every country in the world without flying, now stuck because of the pandemic.
0:15:44 And during these two years, but also all nine years, where is your fiance, girlfriend, wife?
0:15:47 Yeah, that’s the right order, actually.
0:15:52 When I left, she was my girlfriend, and she came out and visited me several times.
0:15:54 And on her 10th visit, she came to Kenya.
0:15:58 And I brought her up on top of Mount Kenya, which is the second highest mountain within
0:15:59 all of Africa.
0:16:04 And I got down on one knee, and I gave her a ring and asked her a question.
0:16:06 And she said, yes.
0:16:10 So beyond that, we were engaged and we thought we would have a nice wedding somewhere in
0:16:11 the world.
0:16:13 And then the global pandemic broke out.
0:16:19 And in order of having her come and visit me inside Hong Kong, was very tightly closed.
0:16:20 We had to be married.
0:16:25 And how do you get married when one person is in Hong Kong and the other one is in Denmark?
0:16:31 It just turns out that the USA came to the rescue that in Utah, you have an agency that
0:16:37 marries people online, so we were able to have an online wedding.
0:16:39 And that was good enough for Hong Kong.
0:16:43 And then we could arrange and she came to Hong Kong and hotel quarantine for three weeks.
0:16:48 And then on the other side of that, we were together for about 100 days in Hong Kong.
0:16:53 But Denmark didn’t accept this online wedding.
0:16:59 So at a later point, when she came to visit me in Vanuatu, we got married on the beach.
0:17:03 And what happened was that a German woman living in Vanuatu was helping us and she was
0:17:08 supposed to process this wedding with the government, with the registry.
0:17:13 And unfortunately, the government in Vanuatu was attacked by hackers.
0:17:18 So there was a ransomware attack and all their data was locked and they couldn’t move anything.
0:17:20 And it’s very close to a year now.
0:17:25 And we’re still not officially married in Vanuatu, so we can’t process the paperwork
0:17:26 in Denmark.
0:17:32 But we do know that we’re married in Utah, in Hong Kong, and in Vanuatu.
0:17:46 This organization in Utah.
0:17:48 Was it the Mormon Church?
0:17:50 No, that was my first thought as well.
0:17:56 I think that was my primary reference to Utah back in the day.
0:17:59 But now I know that they’re a bit of a Las Vegas organization.
0:18:01 And I don’t understand.
0:18:06 So you do this for 10 years or something.
0:18:11 Are you using the money that you raise from sponsors?
0:18:15 Or are you working in these countries?
0:18:18 How does it…
0:18:21 It turned into a big mix over time.
0:18:25 But initially, my thinking was that I wasn’t going to set out and do a thing like this
0:18:29 unless I could have the finances covered.
0:18:33 I was 34 years old when I left home, and I thought it would take four years.
0:18:37 So I didn’t want to come home as a 38-year-old and be in debt.
0:18:43 And some friends and I, we thought that there had to be a company out there that would take
0:18:46 interest in something of this magnitude.
0:18:51 And we were able to find a company that focuses on geothermal energy.
0:18:53 And they are called Ross Energy.
0:18:59 And they decided to fund the 20 US dollars per day, which was set as an average.
0:19:02 20 US dollars per day?
0:19:05 Two cappuccinos!
0:19:10 Yeah, in some countries, it’s two cappuccinos.
0:19:15 In other countries, it’s accommodation, a meal, and transportation.
0:19:17 So worked as an average.
0:19:20 And yes, it’s $20 a day for almost 10 years.
0:19:25 But what happened was a couple of years into the project, oil prices were real low.
0:19:28 And Ross Energy, they were hurting from that.
0:19:30 So they had to pull the sponsorship.
0:19:35 Then I started spending my own money until I had nothing left.
0:19:40 And then I did some crowdfunding campaigns, and I gained a little bit of finance that
0:19:41 way.
0:19:44 And I sold some articles, I did some speaking engagements.
0:19:47 And then when I got to Hong Kong, I was able to make some money back working at the Danish
0:19:48 Siemens Church.
0:19:52 And then eventually, Ross Engineering was strong again, and they were able to come back
0:19:53 on again.
0:19:59 So it’s been a mix of my personal funds and donations and corporate sponsorship.
0:20:00 Wow.
0:20:07 And literally, were you carrying cash, or was it like an ATM card or Apple Pay?
0:20:11 How did you literally spend the money?
0:20:12 All of the above.
0:20:20 So I would always have US dollar because it’s a universal currency that you can use in any
0:20:21 tough spot around the world.
0:20:25 I would also always have a Euro on me.
0:20:29 So Euro and US dollars, I would have that tucked away somewhere.
0:20:34 And then I would have a Mastercard and a Visa card, which I could use around the world.
0:20:42 And then somewhere between 2013 and now 2023, the world kept on developing.
0:20:47 And more and more countries would have access where you could use Apple Pay.
0:20:50 By the end of the project, I wasn’t using cash anywhere.
0:20:53 I was just tapping my phone.
0:21:08 And do you know what your wife’s parents’ opinion was of this son-in-law doing this?
0:21:10 Unfortunately, not.
0:21:13 My wife no longer has her parents.
0:21:16 She lost them before we got married.
0:21:22 But I do know that her friends and the friends of her parents and extended family, they pretty
0:21:24 much all thought I was crazy.
0:21:29 I think very few people didn’t think that I was crazy to do this.
0:21:33 And even the ones that saw a little bit of light in what I was doing, that I was chasing
0:21:39 a difficult goal or that I was inspiring and motivating people around the world or that
0:21:43 I was trying to look for the positive to promote every country around the world or raising
0:21:45 funds and awareness for the Red Cross.
0:21:50 Even the people that could see some sanity within that, they saw absolutely no sanity
0:21:58 in hanging out in Hong Kong as the sand ran through the sand glass.
0:22:04 Now when you say most people thought you’re crazy, there’s two kinds of crazy, right?
0:22:07 There’s, oh my God, he’s crazy.
0:22:09 And there’s, oh my God, he’s crazy.
0:22:10 He’s an idiot.
0:22:14 Was it like the negative kind or the funny humorous kind?
0:22:20 Since you’re asking me, I would say that I’m the good crazy.
0:22:25 But pretty sure that plenty of people out there think it’s irresponsible that I should
0:22:30 have taken a job, I should have started a family, I should have contributed to society
0:22:32 in other ways.
0:22:37 And today I have about a quarter of a million followers online that are very supportive of
0:22:40 what I’ve done and are lovely.
0:22:44 So it really depends on who you ask.
0:22:50 We recently interviewed a woman who walked across the U.S. and she had similar things
0:22:51 to say.
0:22:53 Different strokes were different folks, right?
0:22:56 Yeah, absolutely, that’s a good way to put it.
0:23:03 I’ll tell you this, when I left in 2013 and when I reached 2015, two years in, I couldn’t
0:23:04 take it anymore.
0:23:09 I was recovering from cerebral malaria, I had lost the financial backing, the long distance
0:23:14 relationship to my then girlfriend, it wasn’t going well, we were really struggling.
0:23:20 I wasn’t getting the sleep I needed, malnutrition, mentally and physically, I just couldn’t cope
0:23:21 with it anymore.
0:23:24 Going out of a bag, going from a bus to a train, trying to deal with the bureaucracy,
0:23:30 I’ve been held at gunpoint, several of the ships that I traveled with had sank to the
0:23:32 bottom of the ocean by then.
0:23:40 There was a great deal of racism towards me in Central Africa, more than likely due to
0:23:42 hundreds of years of colonialism.
0:23:45 I really couldn’t take it anymore.
0:23:49 And at some point I just decided the system wasn’t going to beat me and I was going to
0:23:53 find a way and I was going to prove everyone wrong, everyone who said that I couldn’t get
0:23:57 the next visa or I couldn’t enter the next country, I wanted to prove them wrong.
0:24:03 And I kept fighting for it, but since 2015 I’ve always wanted to go home.
0:24:08 And I thought the final country was just around the corner, eventually it would get a bit
0:24:11 smoother, I’d have the support, I’d have the backing, it was just around the corner.
0:24:20 So imagine pushing since 2015 and only setting foot back home in 2023.
0:24:25 Didn’t you fly home twice and then fly back to where you flew from?
0:24:26 No.
0:24:36 So I left home on the 10th of October 2013 and I returned home on the 26th of July 2023
0:24:39 and in between I didn’t fly at any one point.
0:24:44 I didn’t return home and I spent more than 24 hours in every country around the world.
0:24:51 Oh, some place I read you had to fly to the UK twice for something, no?
0:24:57 I think you’re confusing me with a British gentleman, his name is Graham Hughes, he’s
0:25:04 from Liverpool and he attempted to visit every country in the world without flying prior
0:25:05 to me.
0:25:12 I think he must have started out in 2008 or 2009 and he had to fly back home several
0:25:13 times.
0:25:16 He also flew on holiday in Australia.
0:25:20 He spent four years and 31 days completing his project.
0:25:27 I met the guy, he’s a really nice guy, I met him in Panama, he’s good crazy too.
0:25:35 I read a report recently that said that of the 200 countries in the world, you can say
0:25:39 safely drink tap water in only 50 of them.
0:25:43 Now, did you find that to be true?
0:25:49 Did you drink tap water everywhere and get sick all the time or how does water work around
0:25:50 the world?
0:25:57 I can tell you this, I went to every country, every beautiful island nation within the Caribbean
0:26:01 and I believe that most of them told me that they have the purest drinking water in the
0:26:02 world.
0:26:08 So, you talk to locals and locals will say it’s fine because they’ve been living there
0:26:16 for their entire life and their bodies and their immune system got used to the water
0:26:20 and bacteria and this kind of stuff and you come as a foreigner and you might have to run
0:26:24 to the toilet for a few days but then in many cases, your stomach, your system will also
0:26:26 get ready for it.
0:26:32 I really wouldn’t recommend drinking tap water all around the world if it’s 50 countries
0:26:33 around the world.
0:26:35 I don’t know, that might be true.
0:26:43 I traveled with a water purification kit, a bottle called Life Saver and at a later
0:26:49 point I had a filter, a soft flask from Salomon that had a filter within that too and I just
0:26:53 made sure to filter all my water all around the world.
0:26:57 I say throughout all of Africa, if you can get to a borehole and you get water straight
0:27:01 from the underground, there’s no issue, you can just drink that.
0:27:06 If it comes from, let’s say, 100 feet below or something like that, no issues.
0:27:08 Wow.
0:27:13 So those filter things, I see them at REI, they really work.
0:27:21 Yeah, they must because here I am talking to you, I still have all my teeth and my liver
0:27:25 is functioning.
0:27:32 What’s the hairiest story you have about trying to clear customs into a country?
0:27:39 Trying to clear customs, that might have been between Ethiopia and Somalia, where they were
0:27:44 chewing cat, which is a leaf, a green leaf that you chew.
0:27:46 It’s a drug, basically, from nature.
0:27:50 You look at these people who are chewing cat and it looks like they had 40 cups of coffee
0:27:51 or something like that.
0:27:57 They seemed quite tense and they looked at me and they started taking my bags apart and
0:28:01 they found I had a GPS, which I was using to plot my route around the world and they
0:28:05 said that was military equipment and I said it was not.
0:28:10 They found a couple of knives, which I was traveling with and basically I have them to
0:28:14 cut rope or cut an apple or something.
0:28:18 But again, they looked at it and said that was military equipment and they got real suspicious,
0:28:23 real fast and they just took everything apart and then they guided me away from the road
0:28:29 and over to sit with some officers and they were sitting there chewing cat and they told
0:28:33 me to sit down next to them and I was sitting there in the shade, sitting next to them just
0:28:39 wondering what’s going to happen now and after 45 minutes they said okay, you’re good to
0:28:43 go and I just got up and I packed my bags again and I left.
0:28:51 I’d say the hairiest situation that I experienced wasn’t necessarily with customs.
0:28:56 It would have been a checkpoint in the middle of a jungle, in the middle of the night in
0:29:02 Central Africa and I’d been driving, just me and a taxi driver, we were driving throughout
0:29:06 the night and we got to these guys and they stopped the vehicle, there were three of them
0:29:12 and they were drunk out of their mind and they were armed to their teeth and they were
0:29:17 vicious and from the moment I stepped out the vehicle, I was commanded out of the vehicle
0:29:22 at gunpoint and from the moment I got out of the vehicle and they saw that I wasn’t
0:29:29 a local person but I was a North European, you could just feel the hate, you could absolutely
0:29:39 feel hate coming out of their eyes and the rage that from these men, they just had it
0:29:48 in for me and that was definitely the hairiest situation, being at gunpoint by angry, emotional,
0:29:57 highly drunk adults, that was terrifying and I was there for a good 45 minutes before,
0:30:01 for some reason one or the other and I’m not sure I understand why, they just let me go,
0:30:06 they let me and the driver go and the only thing I could do in this situation was try
0:30:14 to stay as calm as possible, no quick movements, be as compliant as I possibly could, agree
0:30:20 with them, anything hateful they would say about me, just agree with them but yeah, eventually
0:30:21 I got out of it.
0:30:25 And all of this is happening in English?
0:30:31 This is happening in broken French, I was doing my very best to survive with whatever
0:30:34 little French I know.
0:30:43 Wow, okay, so now let’s say step me through what happens, by the grace of God somehow
0:30:50 you get through customs and immigration, so now you’re in the country, do you go and
0:30:56 walk around, meet people or you just?
0:31:02 You always meet people, you always meet people, you meet people on one side of the border,
0:31:06 going through the border on the other side of the border and the buses and the trains,
0:31:11 this is a people project, this was not a country project, this was all about people all around
0:31:18 the world, people, cultures, handshakes, kindness, generosity, people are just amazing, I set
0:31:24 out with a motto when I left home which was a stranger is a friend you’ve never met before
0:31:31 and I thought it was a really nice motto but it wasn’t in any way proven and I probably
0:31:38 traveled for a couple of weeks before I had several stories that confirmed that little
0:31:43 a stranger is a friend you never met before, eventually I started saying people are just
0:31:48 people because this is what I believe, it doesn’t matter political affiliation or the
0:31:53 color of people’s eyes or which God they pray to or if they don’t pray to a God at
0:31:57 all or if they have children or not, if they’re working or unemployed, people are just people
0:32:03 all around the world and people are driven by much of the same, they dance to pretty
0:32:07 much the same songs, the same songs get trendy all around the world at the same time, they
0:32:15 watch the same TV shows, Netflix, they play the same games on their phones, they like barbecues,
0:32:18 they fall in love, they get married, they go to school, they go to work, people are just
0:32:23 people all around the world, so my standard operating procedure as someone once called
0:32:33 it my SOP would be to get a SIM card as fast as possible, this isn’t 1845, we’re living
0:32:36 in a world where one of the most important tools you can have when you’re traveling
0:32:42 is your smartphone and if you’re online then you have access to hotel bookings, communication,
0:32:46 you can call people, you have online maps, you have everything you need right there in
0:32:51 your hand, so I’d make my way to wherever I was going to spend the night often I would
0:32:54 have that pre-booked, sometimes I would work it out, sometimes I would just talk to someone
0:32:59 on the bus and they would bring me home with them and give me a couch to sleep on or a
0:33:04 guest bed, and then I would locate the Red Cross, I’d go and meet with the Red Cross,
0:33:09 and often I would be invited to do a speaking engagement somewhere at a school or a company,
0:33:14 I would have to apply for visas and various documents, invitation letters, sometimes I
0:33:19 would need to get new vaccines, yeah what else was going on, if I had any time left
0:33:23 for myself, I was blogging, I was updating social media, I was doing stuff like that,
0:33:28 if I had any time left for myself I would try to go to a national museum and see how
0:33:32 much I could learn about the country just sucking in information from the national
0:33:39 museum or if there’s a beautiful waterfall or a temple or anything nearby that I could
0:33:42 visit then I would go and see that.
0:33:53 And if I do the math, let’s say 10 years, that’s 3,650 days divided by 200 countries,
0:33:59 so you know on average you would have spent a couple weeks in each country, is that enough
0:34:03 to learn about a people in two weeks?
0:34:08 No, absolutely not, there’s less than 300 people who have gone to every country in the
0:34:15 world at this point and I would be surprised if any of those would sit down and say I have
0:34:17 seen the entire world.
0:34:21 In everybody’s case except me, they were flying so a lot of the time they would be looking
0:34:26 down at the planet from high above, even me being on the ground or being across the surface
0:34:32 of the ocean or a lake, you have to imagine a red line being drawn through a country.
0:34:39 So let’s say the US for a second, I came from Canada and then I entered through to Buffalo
0:34:44 and from Buffalo I made my way to Washington DC and from Washington DC I got on a train
0:34:49 and I went up to Chicago and from Chicago I went across the Mississippi River and the
0:34:54 Rocky Mountains and I made my way down to California and from California I headed into
0:34:55 Mexico.
0:35:00 Then at a later point I came back to the US from the Bahamas on a ferry and I entered
0:35:05 Fort Lauderdale I think it was and then so I’m in Florida and then I’m heading up north,
0:35:07 up to Norfolk.
0:35:14 So I visited 16 or 17 states within the US but in reality I’m just drawing this thin
0:35:20 red line wherever my bus or my train takes me and if I’m lucky I can maybe see a couple
0:35:25 of miles out the window so I’m really not seeing a lot.
0:35:29 But then at the same time I would say that imagine buying your first car, you don’t know
0:35:33 what you’re doing, you probably see if there’s a steering wheel and if there are four wheels
0:35:35 on it then you’re happy.
0:35:39 But if you’re buying your second car or your third car or your fourth car then you start
0:35:43 to know what to look for, you learn from your mistakes, you learn more and more.
0:35:48 So by the time you’re buying your 10th car or your 20th car you do not need to spend
0:35:52 as much time in order to understand the conditions of that car.
0:35:56 You bring all the knowledge from all the other cars that you purchased throughout your life.
0:36:02 So imagine me going to 10 countries, 20 countries, 50 countries, 100 countries.
0:36:09 At some point you start removing all the noise, the stuff that people get dazzled by when
0:36:14 they enter a new country and you start to see specifics, you start to see are there
0:36:18 sidewalks or not, you start to see what kind of clothes people are wearing, are they wearing
0:36:24 shoes or not, or is public transportation, does it look good, does it go frequently,
0:36:28 does the health care system look like, what does this and that look like, you can start
0:36:33 to pinpoint what kind of country you’re in, you get adapt to understanding your environment
0:36:39 faster and faster as you get further and further down this tunnel of countries.
0:36:41 Up next on Remarkable People.
0:36:46 I’ve been to every country in the world that has war and what I found was that yes there
0:36:53 is hardship but not for everyone and what you find more than anything you will find
0:36:57 ordinary people living relatively ordinary lives.
0:37:02 They like music and dancing and food and family and they don’t like the rain too much and
0:37:05 they don’t like getting stuck in traffic.
0:37:11 People being people everywhere around the world.
0:37:15 Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People.
0:37:21 It’s found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
0:37:25 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:37:34 Arguably, you may be one of the top 300 people in the world to give advice on how to really
0:37:36 visit a new place.
0:37:39 Yeah, I don’t know.
0:37:41 I’m happy to give advice.
0:37:45 My advice is, so I’m an avid hiker.
0:37:51 I enjoy hiking and within the world of hiking, there’s the hiker’s creed.
0:37:55 And I do not know it word by word but I can paraphrase and the hiker’s creed would be
0:38:01 something along the line of that you should leave nothing behind but your footprints.
0:38:06 And I think we should take the hiker’s creed and bring it into the world of travelers.
0:38:11 So when you go somewhere, if you go on a business trip or you go on a holiday or you go for
0:38:17 one reason or the other, then remember leave nothing behind but your footprints.
0:38:20 Try to be as invisible as you possibly can.
0:38:23 Try to be a sponge when you go into a new environment.
0:38:27 Try to suck up everything you possibly can.
0:38:30 What are they eating and try to taste the food and what do they look like?
0:38:31 How do they dress?
0:38:38 What the bicycles, scooters, the cars, the fields, the buildings, the cities, the shops,
0:38:39 just suck it all up.
0:38:44 Learn as much as you possibly can about the culture and the history.
0:38:46 See if you can learn a little bit of the language.
0:38:50 Use it every time you possibly can because people love it.
0:38:54 If you can just say two or three words within a foreign language, people they love that
0:38:55 you try.
0:38:57 No one expects you to speak the full language.
0:39:00 Just give it a go.
0:39:05 And I want people who travel to remember and this is very important.
0:39:10 They have to remember that as soon as you leave your home, you become a guest.
0:39:13 So even just going over to your neighbor’s house, you’re a guest.
0:39:17 And especially if you go to someone else’s country, you’re a guest.
0:39:21 So you’re not supposed to come there and be opinionated and tell them how things are
0:39:25 done better, where you come from or they’re doing things wrong and you’re supposed to
0:39:29 come and be polite and you’re supposed to compliment people and you’re supposed to look
0:39:30 for the good and for the positive.
0:39:35 You’re not supposed to go somewhere and tear it apart.
0:39:36 Wow.
0:39:46 Okay, in these 10 years, what did you learn about yourself?
0:39:48 That’s a brilliant question.
0:39:54 I pushed my own personal borders in so many different directions.
0:40:00 I generally think that you can measure age in two different ways.
0:40:05 The conventional way is to look at the date that you were born and then look at the calendar
0:40:09 and then calculate how old is this person.
0:40:15 But we regularly experience that some people, in spite of their age, seem much older.
0:40:19 And I think that the way that works is life experience.
0:40:25 So generally, you get life experience as you age, so slowly from 10 to 20 years to 30
0:40:32 to 40 to 50 to 60 and beyond, and you would expect a certain life knowledge and life experience
0:40:37 from someone who’s 50 and from someone who’s 70 and from someone who’s a hundred.
0:40:39 But where does that life experience really come from?
0:40:43 How do you get on the fast track of life experience?
0:40:48 And I can’t help to wonder, that happens when we are challenged.
0:40:49 And where are you challenged?
0:40:53 You’re typically challenged when you’re brought out of your own environment where you know
0:40:58 everything and then put into a different environment where you have to work out, how do I get a
0:41:02 SIM card here or how do I activate it?
0:41:03 How do you get a bus ticket?
0:41:07 You buy the bus ticket online, do you do it from a window, do you do it on the bus?
0:41:11 You show up and you know nothing and you have to learn everything.
0:41:14 Then you accelerate within life experience.
0:41:21 So I wonder, I left home when I was 34 and according to the calendar, I’m 44 now.
0:41:28 But I wonder if I’m somehow much, much older than that on account of having built up much
0:41:33 more than 10 years of life experience within the duration of 10 years.
0:41:38 So that’s something that I’m still reflecting upon.
0:41:42 What do you do after you come back from such an adventure?
0:41:49 Luckily my wife is still around and we’re building a life together and that’s good fun.
0:41:51 And we’ve gotten to know each other really well.
0:41:57 She came out to visit me 27 times across the world and we were together ahead of this project.
0:42:00 And now we’re living together for the first time.
0:42:02 So that’s a really interesting adventure.
0:42:04 I have a book coming out next year.
0:42:07 I have a documentary coming out next year.
0:42:09 I’m doing speaking engagements.
0:42:17 I’m invited to events and to companies and whoever wants to listen to me is speaking.
0:42:23 Then we negotiate a price and I show up and I talk about these adventures and share about
0:42:25 culture and the world.
0:42:28 So that’s what’s going on right now and that’s what it looks like.
0:42:31 I have this adjustment period, which I’m still within.
0:42:37 I’ve been home for just about three months now from something that took almost 10 years.
0:42:42 And you can imagine that the soldiers that we deploy overseas, when they come back home,
0:42:45 some of them need some time to settle in.
0:42:47 They’ve been in a stressful environment.
0:42:52 They’ve been in a foreign culture and I’ve been in every foreign culture and I’ve been
0:42:55 in a stressful environment for a very long time.
0:43:01 I don’t know how long it will take me to reenter society, certainly a lot more than these three
0:43:03 months that have passed.
0:43:04 Wow.
0:43:05 Wow.
0:43:13 Can you offer an opinion on where the happiest people in the world are?
0:43:18 I was listening to a podcast just yesterday and they were talking to the happiest person
0:43:20 in the happiest country.
0:43:26 And so the happiest country right now, according to some lists, is Finland.
0:43:32 And they found one person who gave the honor of being the happiest person within the happiest
0:43:33 country.
0:43:36 And that did sound like a very happy person.
0:43:40 But it’s an interesting thing because these Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe,
0:43:45 they often rank within the top four or five happiest countries in the world.
0:43:51 And then I was in the Pacific and I was in Vanuatu and in Vanuatu, they claim to be the
0:43:53 happiest country in the world.
0:43:57 And I said, hang on a minute, I thought that was in Scandinavia and I do some research
0:44:02 and I talk to some people and I found out that there are different lists, there are different
0:44:05 ways of ranking happiness.
0:44:11 And in some ways, in Vanuatu, they dance a lot, they’re very social, they enjoy music,
0:44:12 good food.
0:44:17 It feels like everybody knows everybody and they seem really happy.
0:44:25 Okay, because you have first-hand experience in 200 countries, I’d be very interested to
0:44:31 know what sources of news you trust.
0:44:36 Yeah, I have a little bit of difficulties with that.
0:44:44 I have found that whichever news media is reporting, maybe they send out a journalist
0:44:46 and a cameraman somewhere.
0:44:52 And the cameraman, he has his camera focused and pointing at the worst thing within the
0:44:53 vicinity of the camera.
0:45:01 So it might be a fire or a dead body or some sort of destruction or chaos or who knows what.
0:45:05 And in my experience, the cameraman is usually safe.
0:45:09 And what goes on behind the camera might be relatively normal.
0:45:14 So while the camera is pointing at absolute chaos, when you look behind the camera, often
0:45:20 you’ll find the taxis are driving, markets are open, school children are walking about.
0:45:28 So I have this connection from general media where I feel that these stories that are being
0:45:29 covered are important.
0:45:34 We need to know about the corruption and about the wars and the conflicts and the tsunamis
0:45:37 and the diseases and the list goes on.
0:45:38 We need to know about this.
0:45:45 But if this is the only thing that we hear about, then that will start to paint a picture
0:45:51 of a world that’s falling apart and that there’s nothing good left within the world.
0:45:53 And that’s simply not true.
0:45:58 I’ve been to every country in the world that has conflict areas, I’ve been to every country
0:46:00 in the world that has war.
0:46:05 And what I found was that, yes, there is hardship, but not for everyone.
0:46:12 And what you find more than anything, you will find ordinary people living relatively ordinary
0:46:13 lives.
0:46:18 They like music and dancing and food and family and they don’t like the rain too much and
0:46:20 they don’t like getting stuck in traffic.
0:46:23 People being people everywhere around the world.
0:46:25 So which news do I trust?
0:46:27 There’s nothing that’s really perfect.
0:46:29 I listened to BBC.
0:46:34 I listened to the BBC World podcast of BBC World News.
0:46:35 They broadcast twice daily.
0:46:40 And I think it’s a good update to understand what’s going around the world, but they’re
0:46:45 not covering everything and they’re slightly biased, let’s say all media is biased.
0:46:49 I think maybe BBC is less biased than others.
0:46:55 A real tactical question, vis-a-vis equipment.
0:47:03 I would love to know your sort of recommendations for shoes, phone, camera, computer.
0:47:05 Are you like Mr. R.E.I.?
0:47:07 Are you Mr. North Face?
0:47:10 Are you wearing alpaca jackets?
0:47:15 What’s the real tactics of equipping yourself to do this?
0:47:20 Or it’s all bullshit and you don’t need Gore-Tex to travel around the world.
0:47:23 Yeah, it’s probably the latter.
0:47:24 It’s all bullshit.
0:47:26 You need Gore-Tex to travel around the world.
0:47:28 I’m on Team Salomon.
0:47:29 That was a coincidence.
0:47:35 I went into a store in Denmark three days before leaving home and I said I needed some versatile
0:47:39 footwear, something that would hold up when it was warm, when it was cold, when it was
0:47:41 wet, when it was dry.
0:47:48 And the salesperson handed me a pair of Salomon shoes and they fit and I left home with those.
0:47:53 And then once I wore those out, I replaced them with a new set of Salomon’s.
0:47:56 And when I wore those out, a new set.
0:48:01 And then I started contacting Salomon and saying, “Look, guys, look at me.
0:48:05 I’m traveling every country in the world in your footwear.”
0:48:10 And when I reached about 170 countries, they teamed up with me and I became a brand ambassador
0:48:11 of Salomon.
0:48:17 I ended up visiting every country in the world only in their footwear.
0:48:21 Equipment breaks and it can be replaced and there’s a lot of good equipment, there are
0:48:23 a lot of good brands out there.
0:48:28 I generally think that if you’re traveling on a low budget and if you’re not hiring
0:48:32 guards and fixers everywhere and you’re on your own, then you don’t want to look too
0:48:39 flashy because you don’t want to make yourself a mark for those who have less than for those
0:48:40 who are desperate.
0:48:45 I try not to look my best always.
0:48:50 That doesn’t mean I go for the homeless look, but I just like when things are a little bit
0:48:56 worn and not too shiny and not wearing a wristwatch and stuff like that.
0:49:03 I left home with an iPhone and I was actually an Android person ahead of this project, but
0:49:08 I dropped my phone and broke it and I decided to replace it with the newest iPhone on the
0:49:15 market in 2013, which should put things in perspective because that was an iPhone 5.
0:49:18 So I left with an iPhone 5 and it held up pretty nicely.
0:49:23 Eventually it broke and then I got another iPhone and eventually it broke and then I
0:49:27 got the third and last iPhone for the project.
0:49:31 So as far as telephones and equipment, I was pretty happy with iPhone.
0:49:32 That worked for me.
0:49:38 I’m sure that there is Samsung and HTC if that still exists and what else is out there.
0:49:42 I’m sure they do just as well.
0:49:43 And what about a camera?
0:49:47 Were you taking pictures or are you just using your iPhone?
0:49:50 I used my phone for the most part.
0:49:56 I did have a GoPro camera and I was updating my GoPro’s throughout the year, so the quality
0:49:57 got better.
0:50:04 The iPhone 5 held up for maybe three years or something like that, so that was a great
0:50:05 deal of countries.
0:50:11 I mean, more than 100 countries with the iPhone 5, which unfortunately doesn’t have the camera
0:50:12 quality.
0:50:19 Now I have an iPhone 13 and there is a huge gap between the video quality and the photo
0:50:20 quality.
0:50:23 That’s just the direction of technology, right?
0:50:27 So I’m a little sad to look at the old photos and see the quality of that, knowing what
0:50:31 it could have been if I had left today.
0:50:36 And are these photos going to be published somewhere?
0:50:41 I ran social media throughout the entire project, so a lot of these photos certainly
0:50:48 were posted on Facebook and Instagram and X as it’s called today, and many other places
0:50:51 I was blogging throughout.
0:50:56 We’re making this documentary right now, so we’ll have this full feature film out next
0:50:57 year.
0:51:00 We’ve been working on that for four years and that’s going to include some of the photos
0:51:04 and some of the video that I have from going around the world.
0:51:08 I don’t know, maybe I’ll make a coffee table book at some point and I’ll pick my best photos
0:51:13 from around the world and see if anyone wants to have a look at those.
0:51:19 But in this documentary and this book, it’s not like you ever had a crew documenting you,
0:51:20 right?
0:51:21 This is all first person?
0:51:24 Yes, it’s all first person.
0:51:29 The last four years of the project, I was working in close collaboration with an award-winning
0:51:31 film director from Canada.
0:51:37 His name is Mike Douglas and he flew out to film me while I was in the Pacific.
0:51:43 I was in Marshall Islands and we spent three days together and then the pandemic broke
0:51:48 out so we didn’t see each other for a bit and he told me to film as much as I possibly
0:51:49 could.
0:51:53 He said, “Film when you’re frustrated, film when you’re angry, film when you’re happy,
0:51:55 just film, film, film.”
0:52:00 So I did that and then he came to see me in Fiji at a later point and then I went around
0:52:05 to several countries and returned to Fiji and he came to film me again and then he came
0:52:10 to Sri Lanka and film me and joined the ship with me from Sri Lanka to the final country
0:52:12 which was the Maldives.
0:52:15 So we have all of that covered really well.
0:52:19 The last four years of the project, we have everything we need and more.
0:52:24 It’s the first six years of the project where I really wasn’t filming a lot and I get a
0:52:27 lot of heat for that.
0:52:28 You were busy.
0:52:36 A friend of mine who’s also been on this podcast is Rick Smolin and Rick Smolin is the guy
0:52:41 who did the day in the life of US, Australia, Russia.
0:52:49 He followed the woman who was going across Australia with camels and he has experience
0:52:52 in this kind of stuff if you ever want to talk to him.
0:52:55 His name is Rick Smolin, S-M-O-L-A-N.
0:52:56 Check him out.
0:53:01 As it turns out, Denmark has an Adventurer’s Club.
0:53:04 So there are these Adventurer’s Club around the world and there’s a chapter in Denmark
0:53:10 called the Adventurer’s Club Denmark and I was recently invited to come and speak at
0:53:15 their clubhouse during one of their meetings and I’m hoping that one day I can become a
0:53:19 member and all of these guys, they don’t have much more than 100 people at one time.
0:53:25 That’s where they cap the membership and all of these guys are crazy people who go out
0:53:29 with kayaks or camels or this or that.
0:53:32 Rick Smolin, he sounds like he fits right in.
0:53:34 Yeah.
0:53:38 We’ve had crazy people and I mean that in a positive way.
0:53:42 It sounds like when you were making some of these border crossings, it was just as dangerous
0:53:45 as surfing a 100-foot wave.
0:53:50 And there was some crazy stuff out there but you have to consider the volume.
0:53:56 The distance that I covered within this journey is akin to going nine and a half times around
0:54:01 the planet or going once from the planet and all the way out to the moon.
0:54:09 So I traveled some considerable distance and if nothing is going to go wrong across such
0:54:14 a distance and every country in the world and over the course of almost 10 years, then
0:54:17 you have to be the luckiest person on the planet.
0:54:22 So of course I have some stories, but here’s the thing, if we were to talk about bad things
0:54:27 from the project, then we would maybe be talking for days because there’s a lot of volume and
0:54:29 I can certainly share some stories with you.
0:54:33 But if we were to talk about the good stuff, we would be talking for months and months
0:54:37 because there’s been so much more of that and I think that’s just the nature of people
0:54:40 around the world.
0:54:43 That’s a good way to end this podcast.
0:54:49 People upbeat about the goodness of people because as you say, media only covers the
0:54:50 bad stuff.
0:54:56 Nobody ever says, “Oh, family had a happy dinner, update at 11.”
0:54:58 Yeah, it is true.
0:55:02 There’s so much good stuff going around the world and the only cameras there are from
0:55:05 the phones that people are holding.
0:55:08 Holy cow.
0:55:10 That’s one hell of a story.
0:55:12 10 years.
0:55:19 No flying into the country, visiting every country in the world.
0:55:20 Wow.
0:55:22 I can’t say I could do that.
0:55:29 Let’s face it, we’re on this dot in the universe and we’re all interconnected.
0:55:32 By the way, Madison and I have a new book.
0:55:36 It’s called “Think Remarkable.”
0:55:43 That reflects what we’ve learned from interviewing over 200 remarkable people like Thor as well
0:55:46 as our own experiences in business.
0:55:50 In my case, 40 years in tech.
0:55:52 So please check it out.
0:55:54 Think Remarkable.
0:56:01 Let me thank the Remarkable People team, Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, incredible sound
0:56:03 engineers.
0:56:10 And as a Nismar, a co-author and producer of this show, not to mention the drop-in queen
0:56:20 of Santa Cruz, Tessa Nismar, ace researcher and writer, and backing us up, doing all kinds
0:56:28 of miscellaneous and important work because you have no idea how much work is involved
0:56:34 in making a podcast and transcripts and everything work.
0:56:43 Anyway, the rest of the team is Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura and Fallon Yates.
0:56:45 This is the Remarkable People team.
0:56:49 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:56:55 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
0:56:57 This is Remarkable People.

0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:13 Happy 2024.
0:00:18 We’re in a mission to make you remarkable this year.
0:00:20 Today’s episode sets a record for us.
0:00:25 We are welcoming Julia Cameron for the fourth time on our podcast.
0:00:28 She is the first person to forpeat.
0:00:31 Julia is known as the godmother of creativity.
0:00:38 She is the bestselling author of over 40 works, including, of course, The Artist’s Way.
0:00:45 Julia will discuss her latest gem, living The Artist’s Way, an intuitive path to greater
0:00:46 creativity.
0:00:53 Until this book, Julia’s three tools were morning pages, artist dates, and solo.
0:00:54 No device.
0:00:55 No dog.
0:00:56 Walks.
0:01:04 In this book, she unveils her fourth long-awaited tool, a vital addition to the Artist’s Way
0:01:05 trilogy.
0:01:08 It’s called Writing for Guidance.
0:01:13 Over six weeks, Julia teaches you how to connect with your intuitive power.
0:01:19 Be prepared, by the way, to be knocked over by a feather when Julia answers my question,
0:01:22 why did it take 30 years to write this book?
0:01:26 Her answer is guaranteed to make you smile.
0:01:28 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:35 This is Remarkable People, and now here is a remarkable Julia Cameron, direct from her
0:01:43 house without air conditioning yet.
0:01:45 First question.
0:01:46 How is the air conditioning?
0:01:49 Did you get the air conditioning fixed up?
0:01:51 They still haven’t fixed it.
0:01:52 Oh my.
0:01:53 You’re kidding.
0:01:59 No, they have found it difficult to fix.
0:02:08 So they are up on the roof, tromping around, and they are trying to do their best to have
0:02:13 it ready so that when it gets hot again, I’ll have air conditioning.
0:02:18 You know, I’m glad to learn that I’m not alone in having all these aggravating things
0:02:19 to do at my house.
0:02:24 I’m very familiar with your work, and this is the fourth time you’ve been on.
0:02:31 But there may be people who are listening who don’t know some of the nuances of your
0:02:33 first three tools.
0:02:39 So can you just briefly explain morning pages, artist dates, and walking?
0:02:42 These are the basic tools of a creative recovery.
0:02:51 And morning pages are three pages of longhand morning writing about absolutely anything.
0:02:53 Anything that crosses your mind.
0:03:00 And they are like poking a little teeny whisk room into the corners of your consciousness
0:03:05 and sweeping the debris into the center of the room where you can deal with it.
0:03:10 So they are the place where you say, “This is what I like.
0:03:13 This is what I don’t like.
0:03:15 This is what I want more of.
0:03:17 This is what I want less of.”
0:03:24 And you are sending a sort of telegram to the universe, and the universe responds.
0:03:26 That’s morning pages.
0:03:34 The second tool is something called an artist date, which if morning pages are done daily,
0:03:39 morning pages are non-negotiable.
0:03:47 But once a week, you take an artist date, which is a solo expedition to do something
0:03:51 that enchants or interests you.
0:03:55 And it should be something that your inner eight-year-old would find delightful.
0:04:01 An artist date has two parts to it, artist and date.
0:04:06 And you’re out to sort of woo your inner consciousness.
0:04:13 And it’s an interesting fact that when I assign morning pages, people go straight to work.
0:04:14 They go work.
0:04:15 I get it.
0:04:18 I’m going to work on my creativity.
0:04:24 But when I assign an artist date and I say, “No, I want you to go out once a week and
0:04:34 play,” they become very apprehensive and skeptical and fold their arms across their chest.
0:04:39 And they say, “What does play have to do with creativity?”
0:04:44 And I say, “Well, it has everything to do with creativity.
0:04:49 We have an expression, the play of ideas.
0:04:50 And that’s what you’re doing.
0:04:54 You’re playing so that you will have ideas.”
0:04:58 The third tool is very simple.
0:05:03 It’s put on some shoes and go for a 20-minute walk.
0:05:10 And don’t take your dog and don’t take your radio and don’t take your telephone and just
0:05:30 take your consciousness out and take it for a stroll.
0:05:36 So the three tools are morning pages, artist dates, and walks.
0:05:45 And then there is a fourth tool, which I have not been faithful about explaining.
0:05:55 It was a tool that I first mentioned in the artist’s way in 1992, which is that I ask
0:05:57 you to ask for guidance.
0:06:04 Then I went for 30 years without mentioning it again, even though I was using it all the
0:06:06 time.
0:06:14 Morning pages, artist dates, walks, and then the fourth tool is I want you to ask for guidance.
0:06:22 And the new book, “Living the Artist’s Way,” is a book which is a deep dive into the fourth
0:06:23 tool.
0:06:30 When you say “asking for guidance,” is it like you’re having a conversation with your
0:06:36 consciousness or the universe or God and then you write down what you hear?
0:06:42 You’re asking for guidance on something which baffles you.
0:06:47 So you write down, “What about X?”
0:06:55 And then you listen, and when you listen, you will hear a response, and that response
0:07:05 is guidance, and it’s often clear and direct and precise and welcome.
0:07:10 So it’s not necessarily appearing to you via writing.
0:07:13 You can just “learn this” or “hear this.”
0:07:20 I think it’s important that you do it in writing because when you write down your response,
0:07:27 you have a record of the guidance that you received, and it’s important that you have
0:07:32 a sense of the accuracy of the guidance.
0:07:39 So when you write it down, you are putting it on the page, and you are saying, “This
0:07:42 is what I heard.”
0:07:47 And why, Julia, did it take 30 years for you to write about this?
0:07:57 I think it’s because I was afraid of sounding too woo-woo.
0:07:58 Come on.
0:07:59 Seriously?
0:08:01 Seriously, yes.
0:08:10 I was afraid of sounding too woo-woo because when you write for guidance, you are stepping
0:08:20 beyond the rational into a world which is intuitive, and I think that I was scared that
0:08:30 if I wrote about guidance, people would think, “Oh, she’s just a little bit crackers.”
0:08:32 I don’t think you need to worry about that.
0:08:34 Nobody’s going to think that.
0:08:35 And you know what?
0:08:37 Tough shit if they do.
0:08:42 Now, where does listening and praying fit into all of this?
0:08:51 What I found worked best for me was to write three pages of guided writing, morning writing,
0:08:58 and that is, in essence, a prayer because you’re saying, “Here is what I want, here
0:09:07 is what I hope, here is what I dream, here is what I dare,” and when you write out
0:09:15 your guidance like that, you find yourself feeling a sense of safety.
0:09:25 I understand listening to this force, but when you’re praying, are you praying to what
0:09:28 people consider a traditional God?
0:09:30 Are you praying to the universe?
0:09:32 Who are you praying to?
0:09:37 I feel like I’m praying to a line from Dylan Thomas the poet.
0:09:45 The force that through the green fuse drives the flower, so I feel like I’m praying to
0:09:54 a universal energy, a force that opens up to us when we ask it to.
0:10:01 So let me ask you kind of a flip side question, which is, are there any people who are so
0:10:10 evil or so whatever that this writing down and the guidance that they hear is just plain
0:10:11 wrong?
0:10:15 If Donald Trump did this, what would happen?
0:10:23 If Donald Trump did this, we might get a better world, but I think there’s no such thing as
0:10:31 a person who is too, quote, “evil” to write for guidance, and I think that writing for
0:10:38 guidance is asking the universe to give us a sense of benevolence.
0:10:44 Why do you ascribe so much power to the act of writing?
0:10:53 What makes that beyond just thinking or cogitating or whatever, what’s the act of putting it
0:10:55 on paper do?
0:11:01 The act of putting it on paper is an action of power.
0:11:11 We write and when we write, we find ourselves led and this leading gives us a sense of direction
0:11:20 and my own experience with writing is that it’s incredibly powerful and it gives us a
0:11:31 sense of right action and I think that when we don’t write, we risk not remembering what
0:11:39 our guidance was and so when we write, we’re putting it on the page and we’re committing
0:11:41 it to memory.
0:11:47 I think a lot of scientific evidence supports that with like note taking in schools and
0:11:48 stuff.
0:11:49 Same thing, right?
0:11:51 Yes, I think so.
0:11:56 Now, what if somebody says, well, can I type it?
0:12:00 Can I put it in a word processor or a digital journal?
0:12:05 Is it the act of writing is not the same as the act of typing?
0:12:07 It’s not the same.
0:12:17 When we write, we are connected from our heart to our hand and when we type, we can go quickly
0:12:26 past important points and I sometimes have people say, oh, Julia, I’m so much faster
0:12:42 when I type and I say, well, fast is not what we’re after, we’re after depth and authenticity.
0:12:46 Really tactical question, do you have a favorite pen?
0:12:47 Oh, I do.
0:12:48 What is it?
0:12:52 It’s a Uniball 207.
0:12:55 It’s a fast writing pen.
0:12:56 Uniball 207.
0:12:57 Yes.
0:13:03 Okay, this episode is going to come out and Amazon is going to be sold out.
0:13:07 We should get you an affiliate fee for that.
0:13:10 Well, any special color?
0:13:12 Well, I like black.
0:13:13 Okay.
0:13:14 Okay.
0:13:16 I have another bizarre question.
0:13:22 I read that you conduct zoom classes for morning pages.
0:13:24 My head exploded.
0:13:30 You’re the last person in the world I would think is using zoom and then using zoom for
0:13:35 something so analog as writing morning pages.
0:13:41 The two did just, it’s hard to fit those two thoughts into my limited brain.
0:13:44 What is the attraction of zoom for you?
0:13:52 I like zoom because I feel connected to the people that I’m teaching and I feel like it
0:14:01 gives me a sort of radar and I feel like it gives me a feeling of commitment.
0:14:09 So when I teach on zoom, I want to say with more depth.
0:14:12 You teach with more depth with zoom than in person.
0:14:13 I think so.
0:14:14 Wow.
0:14:22 I, I think it’s because you feel the purity of intention of the class.
0:14:23 Can you explain that?
0:14:30 When I teach on zoom, I start off by saying, now I’m going to count to three.
0:14:36 And when I get to three, I want all of you to set an intention that we’re going to have
0:14:44 a wonderful class and then I count to three and then we set the intention.
0:14:50 And now this is going to sound too woo woo.
0:14:56 But I feel I can experience the good wishes of the class.
0:14:57 Wow.
0:15:04 I would say 99.9% of the world thinks that zoom is dehumanizing.
0:15:08 It lacks human emotion and touch, et cetera, et cetera.
0:15:16 And the only two people who I have ever interviewed who said opposite of that is you and Tom Peter’s
0:15:23 of in search of excellence, the both of you are in very good company as having different
0:15:25 opinions of zoom.
0:15:31 Well I just think that zoom opens our minds.
0:15:38 It seems like about one book a year because my podcast has been going four years and you’ve
0:15:40 been on four times.
0:15:41 So when are you going to stop?
0:15:45 Do you ever figure out, okay, I’m done with writing?
0:15:55 I don’t figure I’m done with writing, but I do feel like I’m slowing down and putting
0:16:03 more thought into the page and putting more intention into the page.
0:16:11 And I feel like it’s a good thing to be slowing down a little bit.
0:16:18 Julia Cameron’s idea of slowing down is writing only one book a year.
0:16:30 Let’s just say that is a few standard deviations away from most people’s idea of slowing down.
0:16:40 So Julia, if I were to come to your house, would I see stacks and stacks of morning pages?
0:16:46 There’s a whole library of your morning pages from day one.
0:16:57 You would see a big, tall bookcase with morning pages filed throughout.
0:17:08 And I also feel like morning pages journals are a wonderful tool and they are concise.
0:17:14 I know morning pages are a private thing, but that would be amazing to look through.
0:17:19 That’s looking through, I don’t know, Leonardo da Vinci’s notes or something.
0:17:23 That would be an amazing experience, but I digress anyway.
0:17:27 Two final questions, okay?
0:17:34 One question is, I’ve done this with several guests who have these important people in
0:17:39 their lives and you just get another sort of perspective on a person.
0:17:46 Do you think that Joel Fultonos would agree to talk to me about what it’s like to edit
0:17:47 Julia Cameron?
0:17:50 Yes, I think he would talk to you about it.
0:17:56 He’s been my mentor and my muse for 27 years.
0:17:58 So could you help me make that work?
0:18:04 Because I think that would be so fascinating and I bet nobody has ever done that.
0:18:12 And my last comment to you, so listen, I’ve written 16 books now and I use these quotes,
0:18:19 I put a quote in at the start of every chapter and sometimes in the body.
0:18:25 But I have to say that the quotes that you select and where you put them and how you
0:18:29 use them is absolutely remarkable.
0:18:34 I just love how you find those quotes and use them in your book.
0:18:38 I want to know how do you find those quotes?
0:18:41 I find them through Google.
0:18:47 And what search term do you use to find a quote by Maya Angelou?
0:18:51 I go by topic, not by person.
0:18:56 And so your Google search is find me topics about, I don’t know, prayer?
0:18:57 Sure.
0:19:04 I’ll tell you, my favorite quote in your book is this one, and we’ll end with this.
0:19:07 I had to write it down, I love that so much.
0:19:12 It’s the quote that is, “What’s a sundial in the shade?”
0:19:16 Oh my God, I just love that quote.
0:19:20 So I thank you for bringing that quote into my life.
0:19:22 You’re very welcome.
0:19:24 That’s all I got for you, Julia.
0:19:26 I just love interviewing you.
0:19:30 I look forward to number five whenever that happens.
0:19:34 And I hope the air conditioning is fixed before it gets hot again.
0:19:37 That would be a wonderful thing, wouldn’t it be?
0:19:38 Yeah.
0:19:39 Yeah.
0:19:40 How could we help along that?
0:19:45 We can set the intention.
0:19:49 I will be writing for guidance about how Julia can finally get her air conditioning.
0:19:50 How’s that?
0:19:53 That sounds good.
0:19:55 So there you have it.
0:19:58 Julia Cameron, four-peating on the Remarkable People podcast.
0:20:00 It’s kind of poetic.
0:20:04 She’s been on four times, and now she has four tools.
0:20:12 So remember, morning pages, artist dates, solo walks, and now writing for guidance.
0:20:17 Don’t forget, the name of her book is Living the Artist’s Way, an intuitive path to greater
0:20:19 creativity.
0:20:24 Speaking of greater creativity, Madison and I have finished our book.
0:20:27 It’s called “Think Remarkable.”
0:20:32 And guess what, Julia Cameron gave us a great blurb for it.
0:20:37 It’ll be out in the first week of March, but you can order it now.
0:20:38 End of ad.
0:20:40 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:20:41 This is Remarkable People.
0:20:44 First, my thanks to Julia’s team.
0:20:49 That would be Emma Lively, John Carl, and Nick Kaczynski.
0:20:52 Next, my thanks to the Remarkable People team.
0:20:58 That would be Jeff C. Shannon Hernandez, the sound design team.
0:20:59 The Nismar sisters.
0:21:04 Madison, drop-in queen and producer of the podcast.
0:21:07 Also clearly, my co-author, Tessa Nismar.
0:21:12 She prepares me for every interview and double checks our transcripts.
0:21:16 We put a lot of effort into our transcripts.
0:21:23 It’s because I’m basically deaf, and so I appreciate the ability to read interviews.
0:21:28 And then, there’s also Alexis Nishimura, Luis Magana, and Phalan Yates.
0:21:34 We are the Remarkable People team, and we are on a mission to make you Remarkable in
0:21:36 2024.
0:21:43 Now you have a week to go pre-order “Think Remarkable” by Guy Kawasaki and Madison Nismar.
0:21:50 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
0:21:52 This is Remarkable People.

0:00:13 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:16 We’re on a mission to make you Remarkable.
0:00:21 Today’s Remarkable Guest is Mark Rober.
0:00:25 If you don’t recognize the name, ask your kids.
0:00:27 They will know who he is.
0:00:36 Basically, Mark Rober makes science entertaining through his wondrous gadgets and viral experiments.
0:00:41 After earning elite engineering degrees and a nine-year NASA career working on the Mars
0:00:49 Curiosity rover, Mark went to Apple and worked in its secretive special projects group.
0:00:54 But that’s not what most people know about Mark Rober.
0:01:01 Mark Rober is the guy who started with a viral Halloween costume illusion that looked like
0:01:04 you were looking through his flesh.
0:01:08 Well, he’s come a long way from that.
0:01:16 And now, if you watch YouTube’s videos of Squirrel Olympics or his glitter and fart
0:01:20 bombs, that’s Mark.
0:01:23 Oh my God, my kids love him.
0:01:31 Mark has this “Build It Yourself” philosophy that embodies the spirit of innovation and
0:01:33 intellectual curiosity.
0:01:38 He has tens of millions of followers on YouTube.
0:01:45 He also rallies the troops to support causes like treating autism and taking care of the
0:01:46 ocean.
0:01:50 He has unrelenting curiosity and humor.
0:01:59 And this was a really special episode because it was recorded in person at his secret studio
0:02:00 in Silicon Valley.
0:02:02 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:02:12 This is Remarkable People and now here is the one and only Remarkable Mark Rober.
0:02:18 You’re cutting onions at home in your kitchen.
0:02:21 You were in goggles now, or have you found something?
0:02:23 If you want the truth, we’re just getting right to the truth.
0:02:27 I torn ash everything now.
0:02:28 So much for that.
0:02:32 It’s still a good story, though.
0:02:36 So the story we’re talking about is that when he was a kid, he created these goggles.
0:02:40 I was raised in a household like everybody did chores and we all worked together, including
0:02:41 preparing dinner and stuff.
0:02:46 So I think I was like six years old and my mom asked me to make the salad and cut the
0:02:47 onions.
0:02:51 And I do remember this and I was like, “Wait, I’m crying.
0:02:55 I should protect my eyes,” which I went upstairs under our sink and I got the swim goggles
0:02:57 and I came down and put them on.
0:03:02 Not trying to make a big deal out of it and my mom saw that and now this is like a common
0:03:06 life hack, but this was before then and I was a friggin’ six-year-old.
0:03:09 And I just remember her making a big deal about that and it made me feel good.
0:03:14 Oh, like if I have an idea, it’s rewarded to have a good idea and to pursue it.
0:03:16 And so much so that she took a picture of it.
0:03:19 And back then, pictures mattered.
0:03:23 You only had 24 on a roll, so you were pretty judicious.
0:03:26 And so we still have that picture in the family of me cutting onions.
0:03:31 If you Google Mark Rover cutting onions, it’s like online somewhere, yeah.
0:03:33 We’re gonna look for that picture, okay.
0:03:37 Speaking of your parents, what do you tell your parents you do now?
0:03:45 Yeah, it is funny because growing up, I worked at NASA for a decade and then Apple for five
0:03:46 years.
0:03:48 As a mechanical engineer.
0:03:52 So it’s like, I did do the serious route at least, I gave it a go.
0:03:56 And now I feel like I’m taking the best parts of the serious route and what I learned there.
0:04:00 Building the world’s largest Nerf gun or building a glitter bomb, there’s a lot of principles
0:04:03 there that are the same as putting a rover on Mars.
0:04:08 You prototype, you test, there’s a design phase that you iterate.
0:04:13 So like a lot of the skills I learned in real life work for what I do today on YouTube.
0:04:18 But yeah, luckily YouTube is enough of a thing now that they have something to say.
0:04:23 But it was funny growing up because my dad, three or four times I remember sitting down
0:04:26 and just like, Mark, because I did pranks a lot, right?
0:04:28 Which probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to you as a kid.
0:04:30 I just was not serious.
0:04:33 He’s like, Mark, someday you’re gonna have to get serious.
0:04:36 You can’t just skate through life.
0:04:38 And now I’m like, what’s up dad?
0:04:39 Look at me.
0:04:43 I’m like farts spraying glitter on YouTube.
0:04:48 I’m building obstacle courses for squirrels in my backyard, dad.
0:04:50 You’re having wiffle ball drones?
0:04:53 Yeah, wiffle ball drones, yeah.
0:04:58 Basically any sport, automatic bullseye dartboards, anything humans aren’t good at that they wish
0:05:02 they were better at, I’m like, all right, what’s the robot that could do that better?
0:05:03 That’s why we bought the surfboard.
0:05:06 We have a surfboard question.
0:05:10 The first major area is NASA and JPL.
0:05:18 So first of all, how does it feel to send the machine seven months away, 300 million
0:05:20 miles away, and there’s no mechanic?
0:05:25 Yeah, that’s such a good question because when you look at space, a lot of times it’s
0:05:27 more expensive.
0:05:31 And that’s because it’s different than making a car because with a car, you have mechanics
0:05:36 and it doesn’t have to be so reliable out to the 12th decimal place because you could
0:05:41 just bring it into the shop or have a recall or there’s warranties for this purpose.
0:05:43 But with space, none of those are options.
0:05:45 It just has to work.
0:05:52 So sometimes when a bolt has a length, that’s one inch, it’s like 1.000 inches.
0:05:58 It needs to be that length because if an arm’s coming by, the precision can matter because
0:05:59 it has to work.
0:06:03 So therefore that bolt is a $45 bolt.
0:06:10 So yeah, it’s a little bit terrifying to send something to Mars and your job is done.
0:06:13 There’s literally nothing you can do from a hardware perspective.
0:06:17 On top of that, the other thing that’s scary about sending it to Mars too is it takes 30
0:06:23 minutes to get a signal from Mars to Earth and it takes only seven minutes to go from
0:06:30 that upper atmosphere that started an intruscent landing 25,000 miles per hour down to three
0:06:33 miles per hour on the ground.
0:06:37 And so that means by the time we’ve even got a signal and we’re trying to get to Mars
0:06:44 that we’ve hit the upper atmosphere, in reality for 23 minutes, it’s either been successfully
0:06:49 clean and landed looking awesome on the surface and everything worked or it’s a smoldering
0:06:52 heap and you just have to sit and wait.
0:06:57 So it all has to be autonomous and think on its own, especially for that intruscent landing.
0:07:02 So it’s this weird situation where you at the end of the day, it is a dice roll, but
0:07:07 you just do everything you can as an engineer and scientists stack the dice in your favor,
0:07:10 which I think is a great metaphor for life.
0:07:15 So if there was ever an application for artificial intelligence, that’s it, right?
0:07:16 It’s in the rover.
0:07:21 If you can’t do anything for 23 minutes, at least if there’s AI there, it’s like a more
0:07:24 simplified because it’s more like a decision tree.
0:07:26 If it feels this hot, then do this.
0:07:29 If you’re going too fast, then do this.
0:07:35 I think currently for the intruscent landing, it’s like a very brute force version of AI
0:07:36 in a sense.
0:07:40 What was the hardest mechanical system to make on the rover?
0:07:44 It’s interesting because it’s like when people ask me questions about the rover, it’s like
0:07:50 nobody really knows what the rover is because I know my hardware that I built better than
0:07:56 anyone else does because I was in the weeds with it for five years and so does the engineer
0:07:59 next to me because that’s how they divide up the rover into chunks and everyone’s responsible
0:08:01 for a portion.
0:08:05 But then the guy who has the overall view of everything, he or she knows all the parts
0:08:06 of the robot.
0:08:07 They don’t know it individually, right?
0:08:12 So it’s like this weird like emergence thing where we’re all little ants and the colony
0:08:16 does this amazing thing, but no single ant knows all the things.
0:08:20 From my perspective, what I do know about the high level, one of the things that makes
0:08:23 Mars so challenging is the temperature fluctuations.
0:08:28 It’s not something we really have to deal with as extremely here on Earth because there’s
0:08:32 less of an atmosphere and so when the sun’s shining, it’s really, really hot.
0:08:34 When the sun’s not, it’s very, very cold.
0:08:37 It’s like being in a desert on Earth, but to a much more extreme.
0:08:39 Like burning man without the rain.
0:08:41 Yeah, exactly.
0:08:46 And metal grows and everything grows and shrinks depending on the temperature and when in
0:08:49 the variations more, it grows and shrinks more.
0:08:51 So that creates a lot of problems.
0:08:54 Not to mention, I know we had a lot of problems with actuators.
0:08:58 So the motors that move everything and there’s a bunch of them with lubrication, with those
0:08:59 temperature environments.
0:09:03 I think my answer to that would be like the actuators we really struggle with.
0:09:08 And I think it was the actuators that actually pushed the original mission back two years
0:09:10 because that’s the other challenge of Mars.
0:09:11 You can’t just go to Mars whenever you want.
0:09:15 You literally have to go when the planets are aligned and there’s a specific window
0:09:16 that you can go.
0:09:18 It’s usually about every two years that it’s okay.
0:09:22 It’s close enough that I haven’t a fuel to get there.
0:09:30 What does the fact that something that was specced to last 90 days lasted 14 years mean?
0:09:32 That guys like you did such a great job?
0:09:39 No, it means that’s as a great PR department because you sandbag there’s two things there.
0:09:43 One is you want to keep expectations low and exceed expectations, right?
0:09:50 So they intentionally like set, it would be a great W if this worked for 90 days, right?
0:09:52 And so then it works longer.
0:09:55 But the other thing is like, going back to like, you stack the dice in your favor at
0:09:57 the end of the day, it’s a dice roll.
0:09:59 You have all these things that could be failures.
0:10:02 Sometimes if any one of them goes wrong, the whole mission is over.
0:10:07 You just design everything as robustly as possible.
0:10:12 And if nothing fails and it lasts for longer, then the mission ends up lasting longer.
0:10:14 It’s kind of out of your hands.
0:10:17 Did your name get sent on perseverance?
0:10:19 Did I sign it somewhere or something?
0:10:22 Like in the inside of the Macintosh we signed it.
0:10:24 No public comment on that.
0:10:25 Okay.
0:10:26 That’s a yes.
0:10:27 Everybody.
0:10:28 Okay.
0:10:35 One last question about Mars and, and NASA and stuff is when you read about Elon Musk
0:10:38 saying we’re going to put people there and they’re going to live in all that.
0:10:39 You say, oh, that’s my hero.
0:10:40 He’s doing it.
0:10:41 Are you saying?
0:10:43 What the hell is he thinking?
0:10:44 He has no clue.
0:10:49 No, I think Elon Musk is great for humanity.
0:10:53 If he could just stay off Twitter and not be such an idiot.
0:10:59 If you look at what he’s done, Starlink would be someone’s most crown jewel achievement
0:11:02 that they’ve ever done, getting internet out there for people.
0:11:03 Ukraine.
0:11:04 Ukraine is an example.
0:11:07 He did it just because he needed a little bit of cash to like run another business.
0:11:11 It’s like a, his side hustle is something that’s a really good idea.
0:11:12 Yeah.
0:11:17 So I think he has the ability to really, his crystal ball is clearer, I think in some
0:11:20 ways than the average person for sure.
0:11:22 And he has other aspects about him.
0:11:25 Making humans a multi-planetary species.
0:11:26 Yes.
0:11:27 Of course.
0:11:30 That is absolutely a backup plan is always a good thing.
0:11:35 And I think he’s doing more as an individual to push us toward that than anyone else.
0:11:36 I can’t fault them for that.
0:11:39 He single-handedly got us into electric cars.
0:11:40 Yeah.
0:11:41 Yeah.
0:11:42 That’s another side business.
0:11:43 Yeah.
0:11:45 And he really made it cool.
0:11:51 And I think he really pushed that forward a lot faster than it would have happened otherwise.
0:11:52 Okay.
0:11:54 Now, sometimes history is rewritten.
0:11:59 Is it accurate to say that you lift NASA to make high-tech Halloween costumes?
0:12:00 Yes.
0:12:01 That actually is true.
0:12:02 That’s accurate.
0:12:03 That is accurate.
0:12:04 It’s funny.
0:12:05 Which is another one.
0:12:09 When I told my dad that at the time, he’s like, it made sense.
0:12:13 So what happened is my first YouTube video ever while working at NASA was like this Halloween
0:12:17 costume where an iPad in front, iPad in back.
0:12:20 If you do a FaceTime video chat, it looks like you have a hole in your body because the front
0:12:23 camera shows us from the back and vice versa.
0:12:25 And that video went really viral.
0:12:28 And I was like, my first video ever, it felt really good.
0:12:33 It was like going back to the onions in the, cutting the onions in the kitchen so many
0:12:37 years before, except this time instead of my mom taking pictures, like a bunch of strangers
0:12:38 sharing this video.
0:12:40 And I was like, well, I’ve got more ideas.
0:12:45 And so since that time, I’ve done one video a month for over a decade now.
0:12:50 And with that, the main comment on that Halloween costume was like, cool idea, bro, but I don’t
0:12:54 have $1,200 for a Halloween costume, which got me thinking, how can I make this cheaper?
0:12:58 And then the thought was like, if you just have a normal t-shirt with a cool print on
0:13:02 it, a scary print with an eyeball, and then you make a free app with an eyeball that moves
0:13:05 all around, like it’s looking around, you could cut a hole in the t-shirt, you could
0:13:10 duct tape your phone to the back of the t-shirt, and now you have like a super chill, really
0:13:11 wild Halloween costume.
0:13:16 So I worked nights and weekends that whole year to come up with this idea, 24 shirts,
0:13:21 free app, and we launched it and it was a banger success.
0:13:27 And so from that, there’s a company in the UK who wanted to buy it and bring me with
0:13:28 it.
0:13:29 And it was a great deal for me.
0:13:30 It made sense.
0:13:32 And it was like a fun opportunity.
0:13:34 So I did that for two years.
0:13:38 I still lived in California, but I would go over to the UK every couple months and work
0:13:40 with those guys.
0:13:45 And then my boss’s boss from NASA eventually called me, he had come up to work at Apple,
0:13:48 and he’s like, hey, I think I would love to have you on my team.
0:13:51 I think we really need you up here.
0:13:54 And I was like, oh, this seems like a cool next opportunity.
0:14:01 And that’s what moved me up to the Bay Area.
0:14:03 And can you talk about what you did at Apple?
0:14:09 I can talk more about this than I do, but I can say there’s a patent that I’m the lead
0:14:13 author on, which is kind of nice because you can talk publicly about that.
0:14:17 And I will say patently Apple is like a website who covers Apple’s patents.
0:14:19 They called it the patent of the decade.
0:14:23 And it’s all about using virtual reality and self-driving cars.
0:14:28 And what does that mean when you combine virtual reality with the fact that you have a self-driving
0:14:35 car, because if you think about it, when self-driving cars come around, like 40% of people get motion
0:14:36 sickness.
0:14:40 And so 40% of the population will have all this free time, but they can’t utilize it
0:14:43 because they need to be like looking at the road.
0:14:46 Are there ways to mitigate motivation sickness with virtual reality?
0:14:50 Are there ways to create some really interesting entertainment opportunities?
0:14:55 Because if you think about it, a car is like the world’s greatest simulator, motion simulator,
0:14:57 because you’re actually moving.
0:15:00 Whereas on Star Tours and one of these things, when you need to accelerate, the seat turns
0:15:02 back 90 degrees.
0:15:06 And that kind of does feel like you’re accelerating forward, but then you’re not feeling pressure
0:15:07 on your butt.
0:15:09 It just feels a little bit off.
0:15:13 But in a car, you’d actually feel 1G down, and you get the accelerations in different
0:15:14 directions.
0:15:18 What does that mean when you pair it with a zombie apocalypse experience?
0:15:19 Right?
0:15:23 If you close your eyes and go over a speed bump, from personal experience, I’ve thought
0:15:25 about this, it feels a lot like running over a zombie.
0:15:30 And by the way, the car knows where all the potholes are because it talks with other cars.
0:15:35 So you could design a very interesting simulation that feels very real.
0:15:38 And if you get to a red light, in real life, it’s just a red light.
0:15:42 But in this zombie apocalypse game, you get there and it’s like the car dies.
0:15:44 And you’re like, come on, go, go, go, go.
0:15:47 The light turns green right at the right time, but you can pull off.
0:15:49 And that’s like a zombie game.
0:15:54 Like there’s also, if you’re stuck in traffic on the freeway, and you just want to motivate
0:15:57 that, the motions you’re feeling, because that’s what motion sickness is when weight
0:16:00 doesn’t match up with your internal gyro.
0:16:03 So now instead of just being stuck in traffic on the freeway going home, maybe you’re on
0:16:04 a lazy river.
0:16:07 And when the road turns right, the river turns right.
0:16:10 And when you need to stop because there’s a car in front of you and it’s about traffic,
0:16:13 like a little log comes up and your canoe stops.
0:16:15 So this is really interesting.
0:16:19 And that’s like just the tip of the iceberg, but it was a very extensive pattern.
0:16:23 So that’s all I could say about my time at Apple.
0:16:24 Because that’s public information.
0:16:27 I’m just talking about publicly what’s in that pattern.
0:16:29 Have you considered talking to Joby?
0:16:33 Because Joby has the same sort of needs, right?
0:16:35 Virtual reality flying is even.
0:16:36 Yeah.
0:16:39 And the answer is no, because Apple owns that pattern now.
0:16:42 I want to stay clear of their lawyers.
0:16:43 Okay.
0:16:48 Listen, I have a rich history of Apple.
0:16:49 Yeah, I know you do.
0:16:50 I know you do.
0:16:57 And the thought of Apple making a car, they’re going to spec, especially electricity and
0:17:00 there’s going to be a dongle, but the dongle will be 10 grand.
0:17:01 Yeah.
0:17:07 And the car will be really great, but only go 75 miles or four hours.
0:17:09 Yeah, that’s right.
0:17:13 And somehow they’ll convince you that it’s like the best thing and you’ll believe it.
0:17:14 Apple is good at that.
0:17:15 You have an iPhone.
0:17:16 Yeah.
0:17:18 This is a 13.
0:17:19 Okay.
0:17:20 Yeah.
0:17:21 I will buy the 15.
0:17:25 This morning I placed an order for a GoPro 12 too.
0:17:26 You guys use GoPro’s?
0:17:28 So we don’t anymore.
0:17:30 And you want to know what we use instead?
0:17:31 Reds.
0:17:32 iPhones.
0:17:33 Really?
0:17:34 I’m serious.
0:17:36 We have like 20 iPhones that we filmed with.
0:17:38 You don’t use Reds or so many iPhones or anything.
0:17:39 No.
0:17:46 You have our primary cameras are like Panasonic GH5s or whatever, but like 30% of the shots
0:17:48 in all my YouTube videos are on an iPhone.
0:17:49 Really?
0:17:50 Yeah.
0:17:51 They’re great.
0:17:52 They have great dynamic range.
0:17:56 And on YouTube, if a TV show puts, you know, Discovery Channel puts something on YouTube,
0:17:58 it never does well because it’s too polished.
0:18:03 So there’s a little bit of on YouTube, you want to be authentic and who I am right now
0:18:04 talking to you.
0:18:05 This is who I am.
0:18:06 It’s who I am in my videos.
0:18:08 And I think people can sniff that out.
0:18:12 And so by having a lot of the shots on an iPhone or whatever, this is more just about
0:18:17 capturing what’s actually happening versus this super polished thing with everything
0:18:18 just perfect.
0:18:22 I think it works better and they’re just way easier to use and they don’t overheat for
0:18:23 can GoPro.
0:18:25 Sorry GoPro.
0:18:32 I surf and I use a GoPro and I swear 20% of the time it crashes in the middle of it and
0:18:36 there’s nothing you can do except pull out the battery and put it back in, except that’s
0:18:38 I’m very risky in the water.
0:18:44 And then I don’t know why, but the date and time is always off.
0:18:45 That’s funny.
0:18:50 And then it saves it to the wrong folder and like, you know, GoPro, this is version freaking
0:18:51 I know.
0:18:55 Can we just get it reliable or how they even name their files?
0:19:00 Like when you record, if you have a clip that’s longer, it’s like GH, it’s not even sequential,
0:19:01 which I don’t understand.
0:19:03 And you think they would have fixed that by now.
0:19:04 Yeah.
0:19:05 I don’t know.
0:19:08 I don’t have a GoPro, but I’m happy to hear someone in a completely different street also
0:19:09 have issues them.
0:19:14 I can’t tell you how many times we have not got an amazing shot that I really wanted because
0:19:18 it just stopped recording or it overheated or whatever.
0:19:19 So I was just like, we’re done.
0:19:24 We interviewed Garrett McNamara and the 100 foot wave guy.
0:19:27 And he uses GoPro so he has the same issues.
0:19:28 Oh, really?
0:19:29 Yeah.
0:19:34 And it’s one thing for you to do another take with a squirrel jumping over 100 foot wave.
0:19:35 But not always.
0:19:40 We have this elephant toothpaste experiment that was like a hundred and some on thousand
0:19:42 dollars just for all the chemicals.
0:19:45 We’re doing some big old world record.
0:19:48 It’s this foam that creates this chemical reaction to the sky and we had like three
0:19:51 go pros inside like the money shots.
0:19:53 They all overheated, didn’t get the shot.
0:20:00 So I would argue, no, it’s not always just a squirrel guy.
0:20:04 So now we’re going from Apple to YouTube.
0:20:05 Yeah.
0:20:06 A more general question.
0:20:09 Like, how did you make these transitions?
0:20:17 How did you go from rocket scientists to costume maker to virtual reality to YouTuber?
0:20:18 Yeah.
0:20:19 So it’s interesting.
0:20:21 I’m a very conservative person.
0:20:23 I want to say that right now.
0:20:24 I don’t feel like I make big.
0:20:26 You think Trump won?
0:20:27 Yeah.
0:20:28 Not politically.
0:20:29 Not talking politically.
0:20:32 I am very conservative in nature as an engineer.
0:20:36 And so I agree on paper when you look at some of the decisions I made and some of the bets
0:20:43 I’ve made that they seem big, but then at the time, and I think this is maybe it’s a
0:20:47 blessing and a curse, but it feels like the next move is very obvious.
0:20:51 And I think that’s always been the case for me where it’s like, it feels very clear.
0:20:56 I don’t have a crystal ball that works five, 10 years in the future, but my one year crystal
0:20:59 ball, I feel is pretty good.
0:21:04 And I don’t swing it a lot of pitches, but the pitches I swing at are the juicy ones
0:21:07 that I feel like, yep, this is a hundred percent.
0:21:08 I beg to differ.
0:21:09 I saw the Whiffleball video.
0:21:10 True.
0:21:13 The Whiffleball side.
0:21:14 Yeah.
0:21:19 I think as an example, when I finally left Apple, at that point, to be fair, I had 10
0:21:22 million subscribers when I finally left Apple.
0:21:23 And most people will use- Wait, wait, wait, wait.
0:21:24 You had 10 million?
0:21:25 Yeah.
0:21:27 I left Apple five years ago.
0:21:32 And Apple PR Nazis, they weren’t shutting you down so you can’t be this public.
0:21:34 You’re like- No, they tried.
0:21:35 And you quit.
0:21:36 No, no.
0:21:40 So when I first went to work there, they told me I couldn’t make YouTube videos.
0:21:43 And I only had 180,000 subscribers then.
0:21:45 And I was like, well, forget you guys.
0:21:48 You asked me to work for you, and I told them no.
0:21:49 And they’re like, fine.
0:21:52 At least when you come here, you have to wait three months to release a video.
0:21:54 I was like, guys, you don’t have to worry about it.
0:21:56 It’s not like my videos get that many views anyways.
0:21:57 The first video, I waited three months.
0:22:01 The first video I did was just like how to skin a watermelon video.
0:22:02 It’s this dumb video.
0:22:03 It just has a really good thumbnail.
0:22:08 It got like 40 million views in a week.
0:22:13 It’s still, to this day, is my most viewed video because it just has this really wacky
0:22:18 thumbnail of this watermelon shell that’s peeled open and you see like a shaved watermelon
0:22:19 inside.
0:22:20 Anyways.
0:22:26 So, that was my start with them, and then, but I just said I would never say I worked
0:22:27 for Apple.
0:22:28 I would keep it quiet, right?
0:22:29 And then I had an opportunity to go on Jimmy Kimmel.
0:22:34 They reached out to me, and I asked Apple, I was like, hey, can I do this?
0:22:36 It went all the way up to a senior VP.
0:22:39 I won’t say his name, but you know who he is.
0:22:43 And he’s like, look, we should be focused on making great products.
0:22:44 That was the answer.
0:22:49 So it wasn’t like a no, but I was like, at first I was like, oh crap, I can’t do this.
0:22:50 Then I was like, hold on.
0:22:53 They can’t tell me I can’t play badminton on the weekend.
0:22:58 Like, as long as I don’t say I work for Apple, his response of not being no basically tip
0:23:00 me off that legally he couldn’t say no type of thing.
0:23:02 And so I was like, okay, I forget this.
0:23:03 I’m doing it.
0:23:04 And I did it.
0:23:08 And to this day, I ended up going on Jimmy’s show like eight times.
0:23:10 I hosted his show.
0:23:11 We’re really good friends.
0:23:14 I spend the night at his house any time I’m in LA.
0:23:19 So it was like, it was a really good move for me to not take that advice of not going
0:23:21 on but a show.
0:23:25 The evangelist and marketer in me would say, holy shit.
0:23:33 This is a gift from God that I got this person whose rank and file employee who has 30 million
0:23:35 followers and gets 40 million views.
0:23:38 Like I’ll let him introduce the next Apple watch.
0:23:43 No, no, because in their mind, and to be honest, I think they’re right.
0:23:44 There’s just no upside.
0:23:48 Apple doesn’t need someone saying, hey, that you know about Apple.
0:23:52 So it’s all just downside when I have some controversy.
0:23:55 Like obviously that’s not going to happen or knock on wood.
0:23:56 Let’s get that.
0:23:59 Like I’m pretty conservative in my personal life with stuff.
0:24:01 So I don’t think I’m going to get canceled.
0:24:05 But if I did, if there was some event, it only can say, oh, this guy also works for
0:24:06 Apple.
0:24:07 And so they just don’t want any of that.
0:24:10 They want to be fully in control of their destiny.
0:24:14 On the other hand, they got to spend so much effort sucking up to Marquez and iJustine.
0:24:17 In fact, they own a Marquez or iJustine, right?
0:24:18 Yeah.
0:24:22 But like they always have that layer of separation where there’s an independent journalist that’s
0:24:25 just different than them being an Apple employee.
0:24:26 Yeah.
0:24:31 So anyways, all that’s to say, I quit my job at Apple when I had 10 million subscribers
0:24:35 and I loved my team, the people I worked with were awesome.
0:24:36 They wanted me to stay.
0:24:40 I really, and I loved the job I did there, but it was just getting too big.
0:24:42 The YouTube thing.
0:24:45 So I ended up going full time obviously to do this.
0:24:47 And then recently we launched Crunch Labs, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in a little
0:24:48 bit.
0:24:53 And that was another example where it’s like, this just is clearly the right thing to do.
0:24:55 And yeah, it’s gone well.
0:25:01 And when this clearly the right thing to do feeling happens, is it an epiphany or is it
0:25:05 like a little acorn that grows over the course of this?
0:25:06 Yeah, that’s a great question.
0:25:07 It’s a tree.
0:25:11 I’d say it’s more, it’s a combination.
0:25:16 It’s like an acorn, but I would say a lot of the growth happens very quickly.
0:25:21 And by very quickly, I mean like in a matter of hours, you get the gestational idea.
0:25:25 And I feel like 70% of building out the meat on the bones happens.
0:25:29 Like I just get really excited and I would just start writing things down.
0:25:32 And of course this, this seems so obvious, right?
0:25:37 And then, and then the rest grows like maturely over time because the devil’s in the details
0:25:39 execution is what really matters.
0:25:43 But that first vision of just getting stoked about what something could be, like that apple
0:25:48 patent as an example, most of the ideas and that really, really long patent came in a
0:25:50 matter of an hour and a half, right?
0:25:54 When I first had the idea and I was like shaking, I was like, oh my gosh, there’s so much here.
0:25:55 Yeah.
0:25:57 How often do you get those hour and a half?
0:25:58 Not.
0:25:59 It’s for the big ones.
0:26:00 It’s for the big ideas.
0:26:02 And Amazon, I make monthly videos too.
0:26:05 So sometimes if I have a video idea and I’m like, oh, this is great and I could do this
0:26:09 and it could be this, that’s a familiar feeling to me just from the monthly video cadence.
0:26:13 But like the big ideas, for example, the toy company, Crunch Labs.
0:26:14 Yeah.
0:26:18 Once it made sense and the story is actually Kimmel was the one.
0:26:22 I was spending that at his house cause we had just done a fundraiser for my son who’s
0:26:24 on the autism spectrum.
0:26:28 We did a big fundraiser on my channel and it was that night after we’d done it, like
0:26:32 a four hour live stream, he’s like, you really need to make a product for kids.
0:26:36 You think, I don’t think you realize what you have and what you mean to people but people
0:26:37 trust you.
0:26:42 I mean, standard responses, no, like whenever someone tells me I need to do something, like
0:26:48 write a book, go on tour, do a podcast, for example, guy, I’m always like, why?
0:26:52 And when we keep asking why and get to the root of it, it’s so I can make more money.
0:26:54 And it’s like, I have enough money.
0:26:56 I don’t spend that much money.
0:27:01 I’d rather focus on the things I really love and focus on those and make those excellent
0:27:05 and amazing and not just inundate myself and spread myself super thin.
0:27:09 So when Kimmel told me this, I was like, my answer is no, I don’t need to Jimmy, I enjoy
0:27:10 making these monthly videos.
0:27:13 But then just the more I thought about it, it’s like, yeah, you can only learn so much
0:27:18 passively watching a video, but if you actually had a toy that was really, really fun, taught
0:27:19 a physics principle.
0:27:24 There’s a video for me explaining the physics principle and you got that every month.
0:27:29 And then the concept is, teach you to think like an engineer, it’s literally on the box.
0:27:32 Then it’s like, you can reach kids at a deeper level.
0:27:36 And he was definitely right that there was the right move to do because it’s gone fairly
0:27:37 well.
0:27:39 So now it helps make the YouTube videos even better.
0:27:44 So it’s like there’s a virtuous cycle of just reaching more, really everyone, but especially
0:27:47 the young folk to get them stoked about science and engineering.
0:27:48 It’s really helped me level up.
0:27:50 So how do you define yourself?
0:27:53 Are you an evangelist for STEM, basically?
0:27:57 You’re not just trying to get a bunch of views so you can monetize your feed.
0:27:58 Yeah, that’s right.
0:27:59 100%.
0:28:00 That’s right.
0:28:05 I think we can all agree my definition of success is do you have a net positive impact
0:28:06 on the world?
0:28:11 There’s a lot of people who I think by the world’s definition of success, maybe they’ve
0:28:13 made a lot of money, but they’re just kind of shitty people.
0:28:16 It’s like a net negative effect on the world.
0:28:22 And I think by that definition of success, I just want to have a net positive impact
0:28:23 on the world.
0:28:28 And I think the way I can do that most is I’ve done something with these videos.
0:28:31 I realized that I can hide the vegetables well.
0:28:35 Basically, if you want someone to learn something and you say, hey, you need to learn something,
0:28:36 they’re going to shut down.
0:28:40 But if you have a picture of the world’s largest jello pool and you’re in the jello and it
0:28:44 says 15 ton jello pool and that’s the click bait and you click on it because you want
0:28:45 to see that.
0:28:47 And sure enough, I’m building the world’s largest jello pool.
0:28:52 What I’m also doing is teaching you about the scientific method and how you actually
0:28:56 make jello and how all the failures we encounter to get to this thing and you’re learning about
0:28:57 chemistry.
0:29:02 It’s like hiding the vegetables of the real meat with this covering of this really interesting
0:29:04 thing to suck you in.
0:29:09 And so I think that carrot versus the stick approach to education and getting stoked about
0:29:13 science is something that I’ve realized I can do well.
0:29:18 And so this just helps me amplify it because there’s a lot of big problems in the world
0:29:21 and we’re in an all brains on deck situation.
0:29:26 So the more kids that I can play some small role in inspiring to enter the steam and stem
0:29:30 fields, then that feels pretty good to me.
0:29:36 We interviewed a woman they won the Harding who also worked for NASA and she was the person
0:29:40 who could have said Rover doesn’t go, Curiosity doesn’t go.
0:29:42 She was the manager of that.
0:29:44 She made the call.
0:29:53 And after her very successful career at NASA, she went to national NOAA, National Ocean
0:29:55 Atmospheric or whatever, right?
0:29:56 Successful there.
0:30:04 And now she’s teaching students in Georgia math and physics, right?
0:30:05 Oh, what grade?
0:30:06 Do you know?
0:30:07 Yeah.
0:30:09 So she went from NASA to…
0:30:10 So this is my dream job.
0:30:12 I want to be a high school physics teacher.
0:30:13 Really?
0:30:14 Yeah, I swear.
0:30:19 I started getting my credentials five years ago and then things just really picked up
0:30:20 and got crazy.
0:30:21 I want to teach in a class.
0:30:24 Obviously I’d be like a volunteer high school physics teacher, but that’s like where it
0:30:29 really clicked for me that I love this stuff and you can explain the world around you in
0:30:32 math and equations was my high school business class.
0:30:36 And in this time that we are talking here, I’ll just tell you, I’m gonna pull out my
0:30:38 phone and look at my YouTube analytics.
0:30:43 In the time that we are having this conversation guy, I want to tell you how many other households
0:30:53 I’m also in, which is, let’s see here, give me one sec, I will be in and I haven’t released
0:30:54 a video in two and a half months.
0:30:57 So it’s not like the channel necessarily popping right now.
0:31:01 But in the time that listeners are listening to this podcast, I’ll be in 400,000 other
0:31:05 homes on just like a random day, right, 400,000.
0:31:10 That’s five really big football stadiums of people, which is like kind of terrifying to
0:31:11 think about for me.
0:31:16 So it’s like, I can reach a lot of people, but I don’t get that selfishly that moment
0:31:18 of like seeing that, aha, which I crave.
0:31:23 I love those aha moments for myself when something clicks and it’s, oh, I get that.
0:31:28 That’s such a good feeling that if I’m teaching high school physics, like I get to see that
0:31:30 selfishly 20 kids there.
0:31:35 But this is why I admittedly it’s a little bit of a selfish pursuit because I get to
0:31:38 see that, I get to get that feedback, right?
0:31:42 And arguably, if you say a YouTube video is one level, making these boxes every month
0:31:47 is another level, being someone’s teacher for years, another level of deeply impacting
0:31:48 their lives.
0:31:50 And what are they going to go on and do, right?
0:31:56 So this is what I love about teachers is they’re the ultimate sort of investors in human capital
0:32:00 because it’s like, you know, I am the product of some amazing teachers who are they themselves
0:32:02 product of teachers before them.
0:32:06 With the teachers, you don’t really ever get to see the full impact of your work, but it’s
0:32:10 like you are investing in people who will then go off and do hopefully amazing things
0:32:12 and inspire other folks.
0:32:17 It’s because unbroken chain back thousands of generations.
0:32:19 You would love one the Harding.
0:32:20 Yeah.
0:32:21 I love her already because she let the rover go.
0:32:24 I guess she was the one who made the call.
0:32:31 And when I knew I was going to interview you, scene has all your guys are rocket scientists.
0:32:34 I sent an email to her saying, I’m interviewing Mark.
0:32:35 What should I ask them?
0:32:36 Okay.
0:32:40 She’s the one who said, how does it feel to send a machine like Rover on a seven month
0:32:44 300 mile trip to Mars without a mechanic?
0:32:45 I was wondering.
0:32:47 I did feel like, oh, good knowledge guy.
0:32:48 Good knowledge.
0:32:52 You didn’t think I was that smart, but he is.
0:32:58 When you realize you’re not smart, you ask somebody like Wanda to help you look smart.
0:33:00 That’s the real genius in the room.
0:33:04 I completely agree with you because you just made yourself way more smarter by basically
0:33:05 creating a net.
0:33:09 I mean, you know so many people and by extension that you are incredibly intelligent because
0:33:12 you could find out anything.
0:33:17 You were telling me about all these trade offs or he’s at any given moment and you said,
0:33:19 so why are you doing this podcast?
0:33:20 Yeah.
0:33:23 You’re not going to reach 400,000 people in my podcast.
0:33:24 Yeah.
0:33:25 Yeah.
0:33:26 I think I generally.
0:33:27 It was the socks.
0:33:28 Yeah.
0:33:31 I’m not a new podcast guy, but I know about you.
0:33:33 I respect your work and so that’s the answer.
0:33:37 But to answer your question, I kind of say no to everything.
0:33:39 This is very rare for me to say yes.
0:33:44 In fact, part of it was the sock connection on the plane to just such a funny story of
0:33:45 how we met.
0:33:46 Yeah.
0:33:49 Because I know really don’t ever really talk to people on the plane.
0:33:50 Yeah.
0:33:54 And then I was talking next to someone who had a great story.
0:33:55 She was an entrepreneur.
0:33:58 She knew you had such nice things to say about you.
0:34:02 Up next on remarkable people because I have all the footage in front of me.
0:34:07 I watch it through and then I’m like, oh, okay, this is a good moment.
0:34:09 In the end, we landed here with this thing.
0:34:14 So now I need to pick the clips that support this landing of this thing being, or let’s
0:34:16 say something fails in the end when we film it.
0:34:20 I want to make sure at the beginning of the video to say, look, we’re not sure if this
0:34:26 part’s going to work, but we’re going to give it our best shot.
0:34:30 Come a little more remarkable with each episode of remarkable people.
0:34:35 It’s found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
0:34:41 Welcome back to remarkable people with Guy Kawasaki.
0:34:43 Do you know what the word icky guy means?
0:34:44 Yeah.
0:34:45 I think so.
0:34:46 So what’s your icky guy?
0:34:47 Maybe I’m wrong.
0:34:50 But is the guy the thing that’s like what your passion is, what you’re good at?
0:34:52 It’s like the middle of all those things.
0:34:53 Why you live?
0:34:54 Can you remember?
0:34:55 Can you remind me what those four buckets are?
0:34:58 Because I think this is such a beautiful concept.
0:35:03 It’s not necessarily a Venn diagram of what you’re good at, what you like, what you can
0:35:04 get paid for.
0:35:07 It’s really, it’s obviously a Japanese term.
0:35:12 They always show the video of this guy who’s been making samurai swords for 30 years.
0:35:16 It takes six months to make one sword.
0:35:17 It’s his icky guy.
0:35:20 My icky guy is podcasting.
0:35:23 So it’s your reason for getting up in the morning.
0:35:25 It’s your reason for living.
0:35:29 It’s not so much about the intersection of money, talent, and interest.
0:35:30 Got it.
0:35:31 So what’s your icky guy?
0:35:36 For me, it’s getting people, but especially young people stoked about science and engineering
0:35:38 and education.
0:35:43 And I also love making these videos and telling stories.
0:35:45 And I just can’t believe it.
0:35:50 Honestly, once a week, I’m looking at one of my people I work with here and I’m just
0:35:52 like, I cannot believe we get paid for this.
0:35:53 This is bonkers.
0:35:54 Is that what you say?
0:35:55 Yeah.
0:35:56 That’s right.
0:35:57 Like I can’t believe it.
0:36:01 When we’re just doing something ridiculous or blowing something up or building something
0:36:07 crazy, my next video is the world’s smallest Nerf gun because I hold the record for the
0:36:10 world’s largest and we, it’s so small.
0:36:12 We kind of go down in stages.
0:36:18 The final one, we literally folded DNA to make a Nerf gun working with the Salk Institute.
0:36:24 You could fit, I think it’s 2000 if you laid them and across the width of a human hair.
0:36:29 And it’s like learning about what they do at Salk and just the process of that whole
0:36:33 video on, on top of these explosions, we’ve got so much stuff going on right now.
0:36:34 We’re at Crunch Labs.
0:36:38 There’s so many cool things I could show you around here, future videos and ideas we’ve
0:36:42 got that it’s honestly, once a week, I’m just like, this is bonkers.
0:36:44 So like that is my icky guy.
0:36:50 If you can max out on one attribute to having your life, I think it’s gratitude and contentment.
0:36:55 And I think people like you who are very successful or you know, an Elon Musk type where you have
0:36:59 a very dopaminergic brain, which means that you’re really focused on what’s next.
0:37:02 Very ambitious, basically never satisfied.
0:37:04 It’s kind of a curse to have a brain like that.
0:37:08 You get a lot done, you accomplish a lot in your lifetime, but you never feel like you
0:37:12 ever accomplished very much because you’re always focusing on the next thing.
0:37:14 That’s the role of dopamine in our brain.
0:37:18 And so I think contrast that with someone, let’s say maybe they just have a very simple
0:37:22 life and existence and by the world standards, they don’t do much.
0:37:24 Maybe they never even have kids.
0:37:25 They just, hey, I have my show.
0:37:26 I like to watch.
0:37:27 I work in this factory.
0:37:29 So there’s something in between those.
0:37:31 There’s a happy medium, like everything in life.
0:37:36 There’s a middle ground and I do struggle with thinking of the next big thing and just getting
0:37:41 stoked about the next thing and sometimes forgetting to live in the moment, but it’s something
0:37:45 I really consciously try and make an effort of being just really content and grateful
0:37:46 for what I have.
0:37:50 And one life hack for that for me is like to go back 10 years and if 10 years ago I
0:37:53 knew I’d be in this position, I would literally die on the spot.
0:37:55 Like my brain would explode.
0:37:58 Like the people I get to work with down the things we get to do, if I knew about this
0:38:02 when I was like 15 years old, it’s just bonkers.
0:38:11 I think when 40 million people watch a video, there’s going to be quite a few 15 year olds
0:38:15 who see that and look back and say, that was a turning point in my life.
0:38:16 I saw that video.
0:38:17 I saw the Gemel.
0:38:18 I saw the Wiffle ball.
0:38:22 I saw the Squirrel Olympics and I thought, I can do that.
0:38:23 I love science.
0:38:24 Let’s do it.
0:38:25 Yeah.
0:38:26 And it’s pretty cool.
0:38:28 More and more, I’m hearing more of those stories, right?
0:38:29 As time goes on.
0:38:33 Like I just did the MIT commencement speech and they told me the reason they did that
0:38:37 is they asked the students who they want to speak and they said overwhelmingly, my name
0:38:38 came up.
0:38:42 And how much greater praise can there be that freaking MIT has asked you to be?
0:38:43 Right.
0:38:44 I know.
0:38:49 And these kids have grown up watching my videos and these are like next generation’s best
0:38:50 and brightest engineers.
0:38:51 So I mean, that’s an example.
0:38:52 Yeah.
0:38:55 It’s hard to really process what that means, but I’m just going to put my head down.
0:38:57 I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.
0:39:02 And I think 20 years from now, it will bear out to be the right decision.
0:39:06 I’m glad I did this versus pursuing a career in Hollywood or something.
0:39:08 Not that anyone in Hollywood would ever want me.
0:39:09 I’m a terrible actor.
0:39:11 You have to be on strike right now.
0:39:12 Yeah.
0:39:13 That’s true too.
0:39:17 Have you decoded the DNA of making a video go viral?
0:39:18 Yeah.
0:39:19 You have?
0:39:20 Yeah.
0:39:21 Honestly, I have a good answer to this.
0:39:22 That’s absolutely correct.
0:39:23 That’s pretty simple.
0:39:26 Probably the first person to ask it isn’t.
0:39:27 Yeah.
0:39:29 And the answer is this is true.
0:39:35 You just have to evoke a visceral response in the viewer, whether it makes them laugh,
0:39:39 makes them feel amazed, makes them feel wonder.
0:39:41 It makes them feel angry.
0:39:43 You just have to make them feel something.
0:39:46 No one’s going to share a video that they don’t finish watching.
0:39:51 And unfortunately today in our culture, like anger is one of the easier ones to stoke and
0:39:53 to get views on.
0:39:56 Even someone on Twitter, it’s like they’ll realize, oh, the hot take I had that was really
0:39:59 polarizing is the one that got the most views and likes.
0:40:05 I’m going to have more hot takes and more angry things to say because it feels good
0:40:08 that people see my thing and I get attention.
0:40:10 So that’s the answer.
0:40:14 As humans, if we feel something, then we will act on it.
0:40:15 For example, sharing the video.
0:40:19 Now the hard part is how do you get them to feel something?
0:40:21 And like I said, anger is a cheap way to do it.
0:40:25 One way as an example is like I said, world’s largest Nerf gun or world’s smallest Nerf
0:40:30 gun or world’s largest Super Soaker or world’s largest Jellopool.
0:40:34 By just being world’s largest, it’s something that’s never been seen before.
0:40:39 And so inherently you stack the dice that they feel like they’re going to see something
0:40:43 that’s going to make them feel amazed because this is the first time I’m seeing this is bigger
0:40:45 than anything I’ve ever seen.
0:40:46 So it’s like that aspect of it.
0:40:51 And then also if you could tell stories, a lot of people had made videos about squirrels
0:40:56 in their backyard before I made mine, but they didn’t really like name the squirrels
0:41:02 fat guss and give them back stories and really create a story around it.
0:41:03 Quite like I did.
0:41:06 And I think that’s something people think, oh, you’re a good engineer and you make these
0:41:07 videos.
0:41:11 But if I had to pick one thing, I think there’s a lot of tons of engineers that are way better
0:41:12 than me.
0:41:13 Truthfully.
0:41:14 That’s not fake humility.
0:41:19 I’m an okay engineer, but I’m a pretty good storyteller guy when it comes down and packaging
0:41:23 that specifically a storyteller in the form of video.
0:41:27 And so for a lot of these kids, they’re seeing these videos and for the first time they’re
0:41:33 having these visceral responses to a media, someone they don’t know.
0:41:38 And so I think it creates a very interesting link in their brains where like they’re feeling
0:41:40 emotions like this feels cool.
0:41:42 I want to do that.
0:41:43 I want to be that.
0:41:48 So it’s this hack into their brains that I’m planting these seeds and putting it in the
0:41:52 right soil and I’m stoked to be doing it.
0:42:00 When you do these videos and your storytelling is off the charts, I agree, but is it carefully
0:42:04 scripted and planned or are you out there in the field and say, okay, let’s name the
0:42:07 squirrels now and let’s get a wiffle ball that we cut in half.
0:42:09 We put a brass slug in it.
0:42:14 How much is scripted in advance and how much is marked real time?
0:42:16 I never write the videos.
0:42:19 I write the videos is always the very last step.
0:42:23 Like we’ve been working on this world’s smallest Nerf gun for over a year now.
0:42:26 The video will release in a week and a half.
0:42:30 I am just now looking at all the footage and writing what the script is.
0:42:31 That’s my process.
0:42:35 It’s scripted in the sense that so for the squirrels example, we had 10,000 hours of
0:42:36 squirrels filming them.
0:42:39 That’s what people don’t realize when you’re filming on iPhones and it’s like, oh, it’s
0:42:40 just this dude in this backyard.
0:42:44 I had so much footage that we combed through.
0:42:47 And so at that point, people are like, Oh, the squirrels are like actors.
0:42:49 How do you get them to do everything just so perfectly?
0:42:55 It’s like with 10,000 hours of footage, I can tell whatever story I want.
0:43:00 So it’s a combination of, you know, or we’re going to do the world’s largest elephant toothpaste
0:43:06 video or I went to Rwanda and covered this company called zip line that are delivering
0:43:12 drones or blood through the sky, like on drones and they’ve reduced maternal mortality rate
0:43:14 by like 88%.
0:43:15 I went to Rwanda.
0:43:16 I just knew I wanted to cover them.
0:43:20 I just filmed a bunch and then I come home with the footage and then I piece together
0:43:22 how to tell the story.
0:43:24 And getting down to brass tacks.
0:43:26 Tell me, are you using Premiere?
0:43:27 Premiere Pro.
0:43:28 Yeah.
0:43:29 Yeah.
0:43:30 Premiere Pro.
0:43:31 Yeah.
0:43:32 Most editors do.
0:43:33 Final cut.
0:43:34 People are starting to go back to that.
0:43:35 Apple just stopped supporting it for a really long time.
0:43:36 It burned if you were on Final Cut.
0:43:37 Yeah.
0:43:40 They’ve come back around and are now trying to support it again, but they’ve lost so
0:43:41 much market share.
0:43:46 So I’d say by and large, most YouTubers use Premiere and then in industry it’s like Avid
0:43:47 and other more professional.
0:43:56 And are you sitting on a super duper three monitor, Mac Pro, just $25,000 Macintosh?
0:43:58 So you’re not doing it on your iPhone, right?
0:44:02 The funny story about this is I bought, you know, Apple has what’s it called the Mac?
0:44:04 That one’s desktop tower.
0:44:05 Yeah.
0:44:08 I maxed it out and I’m embarrassed to say how much I paid for that.
0:44:10 But it’s like tens of thousands.
0:44:11 Yeah.
0:44:15 It’s more than a car because I was like, I don’t spend my money on other stuff.
0:44:16 I should spend it on this.
0:44:17 So it’s really fast.
0:44:21 And for whatever reason, the way Apple does their graphics cards and the way Premiere does,
0:44:28 it’s literally no faster than my freaking laptop, which I’m like, so if anyone’s listening,
0:44:32 don’t spend money on the big fancy Apple thing, just a laptop is fine.
0:44:37 But we do things like in the workflow, making proxies, so versions of the video that are
0:44:41 lightweight so you can scrum through easy, and when we do that, honestly, you can edit
0:44:42 from a laptop.
0:44:43 It’s fine.
0:44:49 So if you end up with a 25 minute video, how many man hours or person hours went into that?
0:44:51 So are you talking editing or just everything?
0:44:52 Everything.
0:44:56 So this is, it’s a great question because this is the thing people are most shocked by.
0:45:01 When they come and actually film with me for a day or just are around me, they’re amazed
0:45:04 at the amount of work that goes into a video.
0:45:06 Most of these videos take like a year to make and build.
0:45:12 I have my next 12 videos planned out and we’re working on them in different stages.
0:45:14 How many man hours?
0:45:19 If you add everyone up, because I still edit the videos, I write the video.
0:45:23 I mean, I have people who help me edit, but I spend 80 hours just myself editing and writing
0:45:29 every single video, but I thousands, thousands of man hours, thousands, you get one hour
0:45:30 to get one.
0:45:31 Half an hour.
0:45:32 No.
0:45:33 No.
0:45:34 To get friggin 15 minutes, guy.
0:45:35 Yeah.
0:45:36 So that’s the thing.
0:45:38 When you watch my videos, it’s very punchy.
0:45:39 We’re going from one thing to the next.
0:45:43 I just pack a ton in there because I just want it to be a very engaging experience.
0:45:46 You know, Mr. Beast, my buddy, takes that to a next level.
0:45:50 His are just like really, but I do the equivalent of science.
0:45:53 Not quite as insane, but I really just try and keep them moving.
0:45:56 And so that’s also a thing when we go and film with someone and we interview them.
0:45:58 We’re with them for three days.
0:46:00 We always have to tell them.
0:46:01 We got a ton of footage here.
0:46:05 We talked to so many people, please understand most of you won’t be in the video and those
0:46:09 who are, it’s going to be like three sentences, you know what I mean?
0:46:12 So you know that doctor from the bed bugs episode?
0:46:18 You have like hours and hours of him and he comes down to 30 seconds and just putting
0:46:19 it on your arm.
0:46:20 Yeah.
0:46:24 But what’s great about that though is you just get to pick the best parts, right?
0:46:25 The funniest parts.
0:46:30 And also the other promise I make to everyone in my videos is like everyone comes out looking
0:46:31 amazing.
0:46:33 Like I always want to tell our podcast.
0:46:34 Damn it.
0:46:38 I assumed we had this agreement.
0:46:40 God, how great would that be?
0:46:43 You like cut this for I’m saying like all these terrible things.
0:46:46 Don’t cancel the guy.
0:46:49 First stop is Apple general.
0:46:50 Yeah.
0:46:51 Amazing.
0:46:52 Yeah.
0:46:59 So by doing that and just cherry picking, I can really just make sure everyone sounds
0:47:02 as smart as they really are and sometimes people get nervous.
0:47:03 Yeah.
0:47:04 That’s how I like to make the video.
0:47:06 Oh, it sounds like push comes to shove.
0:47:08 The secret to this is the editing.
0:47:09 It’s not the.
0:47:10 Yeah.
0:47:15 It’s a combination, but yes, it’s the writing and I’d say more editing.
0:47:18 I feel like writing is a better way to phrase it than editing because editing feels like,
0:47:21 oh, you use the right sound effect or the right transition.
0:47:27 But yes, the editing and the writing, I think has a way more profound effect on the channel
0:47:28 success than people realize.
0:47:30 But what do you mean by writing?
0:47:35 Because most people would think writing is the writing the script in advance.
0:47:36 That’s not what you’re saying.
0:47:37 No.
0:47:38 Writing the script after the fact.
0:47:39 Which is what?
0:47:41 How do you write the script after you?
0:47:43 Because I have all the footage in front of me.
0:47:47 I watch it through and then I’m like, oh, okay, this is a good moment.
0:47:50 In the end, we landed here with this thing.
0:47:54 So now I need to pick the clips that support this landing of this thing being, or let’s
0:47:57 say something fails in the end when we film it.
0:48:00 I want to make sure at the beginning of the video to say, look, we’re not sure if this
0:48:05 part’s going to work, but we’re going to give it our best shot to frame it so that when
0:48:09 that does fail, people have the right context for understanding why it failed.
0:48:15 You know, Madison and I are co-authoring a book called Think Remarkable as opposed to
0:48:17 Think Different.
0:48:26 And step one, we had about 200 interviews in the can averaging 20 pages each of transcript.
0:48:27 Wow.
0:48:29 So that’s 200 times 20 is 4,000 pages.
0:48:36 So we read 4,000 pages to write the book after we read.
0:48:38 So in a sense, that was our raw footage.
0:48:39 Yeah, that’s right.
0:48:41 And then we wrote the book afterwards.
0:48:43 And you start picking out themes.
0:48:46 Some people start saying the same things and it starts crystallizing your mind what the
0:48:47 story is, right?
0:48:52 I feel like to me, it’s like, how in the world do you write something before?
0:48:53 That boggles my mind.
0:48:56 And we have brought an editor on this happened literally just yesterday.
0:48:58 They’re just like, I don’t understand.
0:48:59 Where’s the script?
0:49:01 I have this footage, but what am I cutting to?
0:49:05 And my chief creative Addy was like, I know it’s weird.
0:49:06 It’s just how we do it around here.
0:49:07 Just trust me.
0:49:11 Just do this thing because then I look at all the footage and then it’s okay.
0:49:12 This is the story.
0:49:13 This is the script.
0:49:18 I write the full script out and then it goes back to the editors and me to then pick the
0:49:19 shots.
0:49:20 As I’m doing it too.
0:49:21 I’m like, use this shot.
0:49:22 I write this, use this shot.
0:49:24 And I’m like picking the shots as I write it.
0:49:28 What if you write something that you did not record?
0:49:34 I just don’t write that you think of it backwards like I only write what’s recorded.
0:49:39 So if I don’t have a shot and something to support a statement or I go out and shoot
0:49:41 it, I vio all my videos a bunch.
0:49:46 So I have the ability and voiceover to say something and then I can create motion graphics
0:49:47 to make that point.
0:49:52 So I do that a lot where I really want to explain how carbon nanotubes are made.
0:49:54 Cause that’s how we made this tiny nerf gun.
0:49:59 So I’m going to just explain and voiceover and use motion graphics to do this.
0:50:02 But like the intro to my video where it’s like, today we’re going to go out and blah,
0:50:03 blah, blah.
0:50:07 That is absolutely the very last thing I write and film on every video.
0:50:11 The part where I’m introducing what’s going to happen is the very last thing I write because
0:50:15 I know at that point what happened and I can set it up appropriately.
0:50:20 Cause I want this to, this spoonful of sugar to go down as smoothly as possible.
0:50:26 And the more the story has a nice arc and it’s cohesive and real life and chemistry
0:50:30 and physics and science can be messy and you don’t know where it will land.
0:50:36 So I do the cool experiment and make the cool thing, film it all, see where the piece is
0:50:40 landed and then figure out a way to weave a tapestry that goes through each of those
0:50:41 bits.
0:50:44 With your glitter bombs.
0:50:46 Did anybody ever try to retaliate?
0:50:47 They knew where they got the package.
0:50:50 Why don’t they go back to your house?
0:50:53 So yeah, the first year we had them on my porch, after that I never put them on the
0:50:54 actual porch.
0:50:58 We find people across the country who are willing to put them on their porch.
0:51:00 Oh, I thought you use yours.
0:51:01 Yeah.
0:51:06 I mean, year one I did, but after that I realized and even for year one I partially did a package
0:51:10 to actually got from my porch, which was the impetus for doing this.
0:51:15 But yeah, no, after that we’re all across the country and locally here around this area
0:51:19 when we see a spot, a house that we think is good, we’ll knock on the door and be like,
0:51:21 this is a great visibility from the street.
0:51:24 Are you cool if we leave this package on your porch?
0:51:27 And almost 100% of the time they’re like, hell yes.
0:51:32 And then when you show the video of the thief and you don’t blur out his or her face.
0:51:33 Yeah.
0:51:34 You want to know why?
0:51:35 Did they have to sign already?
0:51:36 Yes.
0:51:37 Yes.
0:51:38 And they said, I’m a dumbass.
0:51:41 I will sign a release of me committing a crime.
0:51:42 Yes, guy.
0:51:43 I don’t.
0:51:47 And I don’t, by the way, I don’t say like, and if you sign this, I won’t press charges
0:51:48 because that’s against the law.
0:51:50 That’s like me threatening them or something.
0:51:51 That’s not it at all.
0:51:53 Some people just want to be internet famous guy.
0:51:57 And they just don’t care about their reputation like you think they would.
0:51:59 This is like candid camera except you’re the criminal.
0:52:00 I know.
0:52:01 And they love it.
0:52:06 I wouldn’t say they love it, but like, I mean, arguably we just say it’s for like,
0:52:09 oh, this is just a YouTube video.
0:52:13 And sometimes it’s like you incentivize them with something like a Starbucks gift card,
0:52:15 like not much.
0:52:18 That was a trick Kimmel taught me because it’s like sometimes they need to get people
0:52:23 to sign releases and his producers are like, oh yeah, it doesn’t take much.
0:52:25 But generally, yes, that’s the hard and fast rule.
0:52:29 If the face is blurred, I didn’t get permission or we weren’t able to track them down.
0:52:33 If the face is not blurred, I absolutely have a signed release somewhere where they say
0:52:37 that’s okay because I’m not in the business of ruining someone’s life over one stupid
0:52:38 decision.
0:52:39 Maybe this is the only time they did it.
0:52:41 I’m not here to make that judgment.
0:52:42 That’s not my call.
0:52:45 But if they give consent and say, no, this is totally cool, then it’s great.
0:52:49 I’m going to use it.
0:52:50 Last question.
0:52:51 Okay.
0:52:52 I have to do it the surf board.
0:52:53 Oh yeah.
0:52:54 Okay.
0:52:55 This is a short board obviously.
0:52:56 Yeah, yeah.
0:52:57 So it’s not for nose riding.
0:52:58 Yeah.
0:52:59 Or cross stepping.
0:53:00 Yeah.
0:53:01 Okay.
0:53:02 But I was watching the Wifflewald episode.
0:53:03 Yeah.
0:53:04 Yeah.
0:53:05 And what’s it called?
0:53:06 I want to say Kanda.
0:53:07 Kanda.
0:53:08 Kanda effect.
0:53:09 Yeah.
0:53:10 Yeah.
0:53:14 And basically you’re saying that when fluid goes over a convex edge, it follows it.
0:53:15 Yeah, that’s right.
0:53:16 Yeah.
0:53:22 So I think many people who surf, they think that what’s happening that they can get to
0:53:28 the nose is because the weight of the water on the back of the board is holding the board
0:53:29 now.
0:53:30 Yeah.
0:53:36 But you’re saying that it’s the physics of the effect of the fluid sticking to the
0:53:37 side, right?
0:53:38 Yeah.
0:53:39 Let’s see.
0:53:41 I think if your nose riding on like a long board is your point.
0:53:42 Yes.
0:53:43 Let me just think of this through.
0:53:48 I think though, that’s the opposite effect guy because the Kanda effect specifically,
0:53:49 so like a Frisbee.
0:53:52 Let’s take a Frisbee’s example because this is a good way to visualize it.
0:53:54 Frisbees kind of seem to like float in the air, right?
0:53:55 Which is kind of wild.
0:53:57 Like how do they hover like that?
0:54:02 And it’s the Kanda effect where air is passing over the top and then it curves over the back.
0:54:08 So it’s basically taking this air, throwing a bunch of air downwards like a jet pack,
0:54:12 which then conservation of momentum equal opposite reaction.
0:54:17 It pushes the Frisbee up into the air, keeps the Frisbee into the air by curving air down.
0:54:22 So I think this wouldn’t be the Kwan effect because if what you’re saying is true, water
0:54:25 comes up and goes down, it would have the opposite effect of like pushing the board
0:54:26 up.
0:54:27 Ah.
0:54:32 And the thing is, it’s all a matter of the reason you see that on wiffle balls and Frisbees,
0:54:34 they’re super lightweight.
0:54:38 That’s why it has an outside effect of keeping them in the air.
0:54:42 They’re so lightweight that the equal opposite reaction, you know, pushing air down does
0:54:44 force the Frisbee up.
0:54:47 Even if it was water going down and the Kwan effect is happening, it’s curving over the
0:54:48 edge.
0:54:52 The surfboard weighs so much, that effect is negligible.
0:54:57 So I don’t think it’s the Kwan effect that’s keeping the board in or out of the water in
0:54:58 this case.
0:55:02 Well, I imagine there’s also some element of surface tension.
0:55:05 It’s an interesting, we need to like look at a video.
0:55:07 I don’t want to go outside of my domain here.
0:55:11 There’s always someone out there who knows exactly, but the Kwan effect absolutely is
0:55:12 happening here guy.
0:55:14 It definitely is curving over the surface.
0:55:17 Just like you said, you would have spoon in a flow of water and it curves.
0:55:19 That’s absolutely happening here.
0:55:22 I’m not sure if that explains why you can go to the front of it.
0:55:24 We’d have to like look at some video, but here’s what I love guy.
0:55:26 You know, I love about this.
0:55:28 You watch that video.
0:55:33 You learn something and you took it into your own life and started thinking about it, right?
0:55:37 Like that’s the highest compliment anyone could give me right there.
0:55:39 Like you just made my day.
0:55:40 Right?
0:55:44 You just made my day.
0:55:55 So that’s Mark Rober, Mr. Fart Bombs, Glitter Bombs, Squirrel Olympics, Bed Bugs.
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