0:00:02 He’s not trained in this business at all.
0:00:04 He doesn’t follow any of the protocol that you’re used to.
0:00:06 He’s just so uncomfortably unusual.
0:00:09 What he was trained on was he was trained on reality television.
0:00:12 I have not been on reality TV, but my understanding is if you’re trained on reality TV,
0:00:13 like your mission is to create drama.
0:00:15 Your mission is to be as interesting as possible.
0:00:17 And as controversial as possible, right?
0:00:19 The other thing he was trained in was professional wrestling.
0:00:21 Both reality TV and professional wrestling grew up together
0:00:23 in this sort of new alternate media landscape.
0:00:25 Pseudo-real entertainment.
0:00:27 Or maybe the most real thing.
0:00:29 Friend Rick Rubin says that these are actually the most real things,
0:00:30 not the least real things.
0:00:32 If you think professional wrestling is fake,
0:00:33 just wait until you read the newspaper.
0:00:39 In this episode, taken from the Ben and Mark show,
0:00:43 Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and I sit down to map the evolution of media.
0:00:46 From Craigslist to Rogan, from Watergate to Trump,
0:00:51 from centralized institutions to the rise of internet native politicians and podcasters.
0:00:54 We look at how social platforms disrupted the media model,
0:00:57 how authenticity became the new currency,
0:00:59 and what it means to build,
0:01:02 and communicate in a fragmented post-press world.
0:01:04 Let’s get into it.
0:01:08 The content here is for informational purposes only,
0:01:12 should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice,
0:01:15 or be used to evaluate any investment or security,
0:01:20 and is not directed at any investor or potential investors in any A16Z fund.
0:01:24 Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may maintain investments
0:01:26 in the companies discussed in this podcast.
0:01:29 For more details, including a link to our investments,
0:01:32 please see A16Z.com slash disclosures.
0:01:36 Hey everybody, welcome to the Ben and Mark show.
0:01:39 I’m Eric Tarnberg, the newest GP at A16Z.
0:01:43 And before this, I was investing and also running a media company called Turpentine,
0:01:45 which I’m glad is now part of A16Z.
0:01:50 And we thought this would be a great excuse to do an episode on the evolution of media.
0:01:56 And you guys have had a front row to the evolution of media from a few different angles.
0:02:01 You’ve both invested in a lot of the major disruptions to legacy media
0:02:06 over the past couple decades, Facebook, Twitter, Substack, many others.
0:02:09 You’ve both been a creator and producer of media.
0:02:14 Benedict Evans once called A16Z a media company that monetizes via VC.
0:02:17 And you’ve both been subjects and participants,
0:02:19 sometimes unwillingly, of the press and media.
0:02:22 So you’ve seen it from many different vantage points.
0:02:26 And we thought this episode, we’d take a structural look at how the media has evolved.
0:02:30 Mark, why do you think it’s so important to look at it from a structural perspective?
0:02:33 And what inspired you to spend so much time thinking about media?
0:02:37 You know, if you’re like me, you kind of start out worshiping the press, right?
0:02:38 And so it’s like the world’s a complicated place.
0:02:41 And there are all these really smart people that spend all day trying to explain it.
0:02:44 So in my case, I started reading the Wall Street Journal in the New York Times in college
0:02:45 and I read it every day.
0:02:47 And I just thought it was amazing that for relatively little money,
0:02:49 they would kind of explain everything happened in the world.
0:02:54 Kind of the heyday of centralized media or kind of the tail decade of centralized media in the 1990s.
0:02:56 Maybe in retrospect, we all didn’t know how good we had it.
0:03:00 Then basically, of course, what happened was the internet actually worked
0:03:02 and it became a big factor.
0:03:04 And it started to actually change the business of the media.
0:03:07 And actually starting in the mid to late 1990s,
0:03:11 and maybe the internet itself and the web were kind of the early kind of changes that I saw.
0:03:13 But then, you know, Craigslist hit pretty hard pretty fast.
0:03:15 And if you’re going to go back and reconstruct the history of Craigslist,
0:03:19 you know, cut the legs out from under newspapers quite quickly in the internet revolution
0:03:21 because it took out classified advertising,
0:03:23 which it turned out had been a huge source of revenue.
0:03:23 Something like a third year.
0:03:25 Particularly for the local newspapers, right?
0:03:25 Yeah.
0:03:26 Yeah, that’s right.
0:03:30 Well, and some of the national newspapers are local newspapers in terms of their business models,
0:03:31 especially in those days.
0:03:34 The New York Times was a local New York newspaper just as much as it was a national paper.
0:03:36 And so they had a lot of local ads.
0:03:37 And then the Washington Post, actually.
0:03:40 I remember actually trying to subscribe to the Washington Post in college.
0:03:41 And it was basically impossible.
0:03:43 They basically didn’t have delivery outside the Washington area.
0:03:46 It was very much a local paper, even though it covered the national government.
0:03:48 And so as that started to happen,
0:03:51 then my company, Netscape, our company that Ben and I built in the 90s
0:03:54 was a major provider of software to these companies.
0:03:55 And so we actually had a full suite.
0:03:56 What was it called? The Publishing System?
0:03:58 Yeah, Publishing System, I think.
0:03:59 Yeah, the Netscape Publishing System.
0:04:01 And so we actually had at one point a full-fledged content management system,
0:04:04 publishing system, that a bunch of the major newspapers bought.
0:04:05 So we got to know them as businesses.
0:04:08 And then one of my earliest meetings I remember was actually with Dow Jones,
0:04:10 which owned the Wall Street Journal at that time,
0:04:13 that explained to me that adopting new technology for the Washington Post
0:04:16 is actually quite difficult because it turns out it was unionized.
0:04:18 And as late as, I forget the year, 19,
0:04:21 I don’t know how long this lasted, but for sure through the 1990s,
0:04:24 they actually had a full-time employee who actually hand-built all their servers
0:04:27 because it had been in a prior union contract
0:04:29 that all servers, to be used by the Wall Street Journal,
0:04:32 all servers were to be hand-built because that was a job
0:04:33 for somebody that at one point made sense.
0:04:37 Well, there’s an interesting meta point in there, which I think is also going to really relate
0:04:41 to manufacturing, which we won’t get in this episode, but in future episodes,
0:04:47 is the collective bargaining agreements tend to be very incompatible with technological change,
0:04:54 which is kind of a very orthogonal but salient issue to the general idea of collective bargaining
0:05:00 that it kind of assumes a fixed technology set, which is highly untrue in today’s world.
0:05:05 So there probably needs to be, you know, even if you’re pro-union, a real evolution to that idea.
0:05:08 Yeah, and very relevant as Ben says, not just more broadly a manufacturer,
0:05:10 but also a lot of the media companies now are unionized.
0:05:13 And a lot that weren’t unionized a decade ago are unionized now.
0:05:15 And Mark, you often support the unions, right?
0:05:16 You support the unions.
0:05:18 Yeah, well, yes.
0:05:20 When I’m in a bad mood and they’ve written a bad story about me,
0:05:24 I issue full-throated votes of support for the unions and their collective bargaining
0:05:25 and their ability to go on strike.
0:05:30 Their ability to completely destroy the revenue of their host organisms.
0:05:32 And so many of them are actually unionized in their tech staff,
0:05:34 and then they’re also now unionized on the reporting staff.
0:05:37 And it actually has been, I think, a, I mean, they should do whatever they think is right,
0:05:39 but it certainly doesn’t make it easier for businesses to adapt.
0:05:43 So that kind of got me thinking about, okay, this is an industry like any other industry,
0:05:44 and this is a business like any other business.
0:05:47 And I got to meet a lot of the CEOs and a lot of the publishers of major publications
0:05:49 and people running TV networks.
0:05:50 And they were excited about the internet.
0:05:51 They saw the opportunity.
0:05:52 They were worried about it.
0:05:53 They saw the Craigslist thing happening.
0:05:57 And then the music industry got hit super hard with Napster around the year 2000,
0:05:59 which was quite early for a lot of these changes.
0:06:01 And so that really freaked out every other media business
0:06:03 because they saw what was happening in music,
0:06:04 and they were worried about it happening to themselves.
0:06:07 And so, you know, so I’d say like, you know, anxiety kept rising.
0:06:09 The business structurally kept changing.
0:06:11 And by the way, certain media businesses have done extraordinarily well with the internet.
0:06:14 And actually, interestingly, the New York Times is actually one of those.
0:06:17 But many others have been, let’s say, structurally compromised or disadvantaged.
0:06:20 The most obvious observation to make is just if you just think about news.
0:06:23 So it’s like, how many news organizations should there be?
0:06:29 And in the old days, you would have three network news organizations, NBC, CBS, ABC News.
0:06:31 You’d have maybe three news cable channels.
0:06:34 You’d have one or two newspapers per city.
0:06:37 You’d have a handful of radio stations per city,
0:06:39 a handful of local television stations per city,
0:06:41 a handful of national news magazines.
0:06:43 You remember in the old days, it was Time Magazine, Newsweek, and U.S. News
0:06:45 were the three national news magazines.
0:06:49 And so in each discrete media market, you could have one or two or three news organizations.
0:06:51 And you could make the economics work.
0:06:55 But if the internet is a solvent that basically turns every media into every other kind of media,
0:06:59 right, where all of a sudden local TV is competing with national network TV,
0:07:02 competing with cable TV, competing with newspapers, competing with magazines.
0:07:05 Now, all of a sudden, you add it up and you’ve got 30, 40, or 50 news organizations
0:07:07 all competing directly with each other.
0:07:09 And that’s been the state of affairs for the last 20 years.
0:07:11 And by the way, that still hasn’t reconciled.
0:07:12 It’s actually really amazing.
0:07:14 I can never get anybody in the media to think about any of these terms.
0:07:16 It’s just literally too many competitors.
0:07:19 It’s simply an oversupply of news organizations.
0:07:21 And then what’s happened, you know, they haven’t rationalized, right?
0:07:24 So why do CBS News and CNN have separate reporting staffs?
0:07:27 Like, you know, universe of online streaming and internet content, it doesn’t make any sense.
0:07:30 There should have been some level of rationalization at some point, but there never was.
0:07:33 And so what’s happened against the structural analysis is what’s happened is every single
0:07:35 news organization now is subscale.
0:07:39 So you’ve got 30 subscale players competing with each other instead of three-scale players
0:07:39 competing with each other.
0:07:41 And some of that is regulation.
0:07:42 Some of that is bans on M&A.
0:07:43 Some of that is licensing.
0:07:45 Some of that is obstinance.
0:07:50 Also, the news business has this kind of characteristic that some businesses get into, which has this
0:07:53 pluses and minuses where it has a missionary component, right?
0:07:55 And so it’s got this thing of, well, we’re not just a business.
0:07:56 Like, we’re a calling.
0:07:56 We’re a cause.
0:07:58 We’re vital to the protection of democracy.
0:08:02 And like, there’s something admirable in that it is good, I think, to have a higher purpose
0:08:02 to what you do.
0:08:07 But that can also become an inhibitor to thinking, I would say, rationally and clinically about
0:08:08 the structure of one’s business.
0:08:11 And I think that that thinking in that industry may still be somewhat lacking.
0:08:17 And it felt like that ramped up at some point where a lot of media, particularly in tech,
0:08:21 turned from sort of reviewing gadgets to defending democracy.
0:08:29 I guess that evolution, you know, it’s an interesting and long evolution, I think, not just of tech
0:08:30 media, but all media where.
0:08:34 So my father was a writer and sometimes journalist.
0:08:36 He spent a lot of his career as a journalist.
0:08:43 And the thing that he used to argue, and if you think about kind of general, what we call
0:08:47 journalism, so the kind of modern state of things, centralized media, you know, it’s like
0:08:48 a hundred years running.
0:08:54 And what he said is in the early days, journalism was like literally reporting what you saw.
0:08:57 And the journalists themselves did not have college degrees.
0:09:01 They were just sort of regular people who reported what they saw.
0:09:07 And they didn’t have kind of strong ideological kind of or as strong ideological points of view
0:09:08 for the main part.
0:09:09 There certainly were some that did.
0:09:12 And then kind of journalism became a profession.
0:09:14 It became professionalized.
0:09:17 Not unlike how kind of politicians had become professionalized over the years.
0:09:24 And at that point, it became much more ideological and much less kind of reporting what you see.
0:09:33 And so that change, I think, started more in like the 1960s and 1970s than, you know, sort of not so recent.
0:09:48 Then when you added the internet to that, so you have the ideological bent, and then the internet and the change in the business model and the heavy competition for readers kind of moved the standard of truth way, way down.
0:10:00 So in terms of fact-checking and things like that, or caring what the facts are, so everything essentially became TMZ or the National Enquirer in terms of they’d go for a story, they’d get the story.
0:10:03 If they couldn’t get the facts, they’d write the narrative.
0:10:13 And we experience this all the time now, where somebody will like literally fact-check something with us, fact-check, and then we’ll say, no, that’s not true, and they’ll write it anyway.
0:10:20 And it’ll be something like as, you know, not like a fact, you know about this fact, but are you suing this company?
0:10:22 And we’ll go, no, and they’ll write this story anyway.
0:10:25 No, these guys, we’ve heard from others that they’re suing the company.
0:10:30 It’s like, well, if we’re not the definitive source on that, then okay.
0:10:39 So it really has changed quite a bit over the years, I think, culminating in this kind of activist tech press and all these things.
0:10:46 Journalist Wesley Lowery, I think, once called it moral clarity, sort of, in justifying what journalists needed to have.
0:10:55 Well, there’s also, there’s always been an inherent, well, not always, for many, many decades, to Ben’s point, there’s been an inherent conflict in the principles of journalism, just as I hear them.
0:10:58 You know, and one is, you know, one is, you know, objectivity, right?
0:11:03 So to be kind of above the fray and objectivity and tell both sides and, you know, accurately convey the facts.
0:11:06 But then they have these, they have these, they have these two other phrases that they’ll use.
0:11:07 And this, this goes back decades.
0:11:09 One is speak truth to power.
0:11:11 Right.
0:11:12 So, you know, which.
0:11:13 Who’s power?
0:11:14 Who’s truth?
0:11:15 Yeah, exactly.
0:11:17 And by the way, there’s a very interesting question on the PowerPoint.
0:11:20 Like, okay, so here’s a very interesting question.
0:11:21 Who’s more powerful, a CEO or a reporter?
0:11:33 And, you know, if you ask the reporter, he’s like, well, obviously the CEO is more powerful because he has, you know, 100,000 employees and billions in revenue and all this, you know, ability to determine the fate of industries and business and, you know, politics and so forth.
0:11:37 The counterargument is the reporter has the ability to get the CEO fired.
0:11:39 Right.
0:11:42 And so, and this actually just happened, I guess.
0:11:43 And not vice versa.
0:11:44 And not vice versa.
0:11:48 A CEO cannot get a reporter fired, but a reporter can very much get a CEO fired.
0:11:51 And so, so anyway, so there’s the whole speak truth to power thing.
0:11:56 And then there’s the other, the other, the other, the other phrase they used to use, what it was, it was like comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
0:11:57 Right.
0:12:03 And again, it’s this, it, it sets up, you know, it sort of defines this, this, this, this polarized oppositional role.
0:12:04 Right.
0:12:05 And, and it’s like, okay, fine.
0:12:09 Like, you know, it’s like, I’m a hundred percent supporter of the free press, a hundred percent supporter of the first amendment.
0:12:12 I’m a bigger supporter of the first amendment than most reporters I know.
0:12:20 But however, but, you know, like it’s not, you know, speak truth to power.
0:12:23 And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and be objective are two different things.
0:12:26 They really are like, you know, they’re really two different goals.
0:12:35 And I, I think that, I think in many ways that, that is at the heart of the, you know, that, that, that’s at the heart of kind of the internal conflict that runs inside these.
0:12:48 And again, you know, maybe you could think about this as a little bit, again, between this sort of contrast or conflict between like, you know, missionary and mercenary, you know, which is like, if it’s just a business, you could argue that it maybe should be like completely objective because people should pay for completely objective news.
0:12:55 Or you could argue by the way that it should be completely scurrilous because it should just be yellow journalism and sell as many, you know, copies as possible.
0:13:02 But it’s when it takes on this moral calling of, of speak truth to power that it has this goal and this sort of motivation.
0:13:11 And then, and then, you know, in, in our world, ultimately, therefore a political alignment and a set of political motivations that, you know, that, that, that basically override the business judgment.
0:13:14 And I think, you know, that, that’s been the story of a lot of the, a lot of the last decade for sure.
0:13:21 When, when did you guys start to notice that, that some of the legacy media was really failing to achieve its, its ideals?
0:13:31 And maybe Mark, we can get into Martin Gurry’s sort of analysis and some of the structural forces behind how social media and the internet has sort of accelerated that.
0:13:31 Yeah.
0:13:36 So we’ll tell the personal side of the story first and then, and then, you know, go to the theoretical, I think maybe.
0:13:40 So, so, you know, Ben, Ben spent a lot of time with the press over the years.
0:13:43 You know, I, I had done basically an East coast press tour.
0:13:54 So, so kids in the old days, what you used to do to deal with the press is once, once, if you were like a prominent public figure, CEO, or, you know, kind of major, you know, kind of person who’s in the news a lot.
0:13:58 And you had a, you know, you had your own, you know, kind of, you know, PR capability and resources.
0:14:07 What you would do is once a year, you would go do a press tour and you would fly to the East coast because they’re all on the East coast, which is a whole other, whole other dimension of this.
0:14:08 So you’d fly 3000 miles.
0:14:16 And then basically you’d go around and you’d meet, meet with all of the, meet with the reporters, but also the editors and publishers of all the major publications.
0:14:27 And I did this for, you know, I did this for many years going back to the nineties and I probably did it 20 times, you know, leading into, leading into, I’m going to talk about 2017 as the change, but leading in 2017.
0:14:37 And like, generally it had always been like, it had always been what I described as like a benign and even enjoyable experience, which is, you know, you kind of go there, they put together roundtables of all their, of all their reporters, you know, you visit their offices.
0:14:40 And so they, they would, you know, usually fill up a conference room with interested people.
0:14:45 And if you were, you know, considered high profile enough, they’d bring in the editor and the publisher.
0:14:48 And so you’d, you’d sit and you’d do open Q and A and discuss and so forth.
0:14:57 And, and then, you know, because I was in the internet, you know, involved in so many aspects of internet business, I would also have the business meetings, you know, so I’d meet with the publishers or the CEOs, you know, as well.
0:15:01 And at that time knew most of the major publishers and CEOs of the big media companies.
0:15:12 And so, you know, up until I would say through 2016, it was, you know, relatively benign experience, lots of, you know, curiosity about new technology, lots of curiosity about structural changes.
0:15:16 You know, they were very interested in the future, the media business, but very interested in having that conversation.
0:15:20 And, you know, we, we always had companies that were trying to help, you know, with, with different aspects of that.
0:15:21 So there, there was always a lot to talk about.
0:15:28 And then, you know, in the, in the, in the early 2010s, you had the rise of the new digital media companies, you know, of Vox and Buzzfeed and these guys.
0:15:34 And so the, you know, the legacy publishers were very interested in them and trying to figure out if they should compete with them or buy them or, or what.
0:15:45 And so, you know, generally very, you know, kind of very, you know, friendly is maybe the wrong term because they are, you know, they are in this sort of, you know, semi, semi adversarial positioning, you know, we’re power.
0:15:50 But, you know, still, like, I would say a lot of curiosity, a lot of open-mindedness.
0:15:54 2017, spring of 2017 was the last one that I did.
0:15:59 And I, I just, I remember it very vividly because it was a starkly different experience than the one in 2016.
0:16:04 I mean, it was like somebody had flipped a light switch and, and not, not in a good direction.
0:16:12 And I would say 2017 one was just like naked hostility, like, just like flat out naked, we hate you.
0:16:20 You know, people sitting across the table, arms folded, glaring, you know, one high profile business journalist who’s still very active.
0:16:24 We, we invited him to a dinner, three-hour dinner, which this made it super fun.
0:16:29 And he started out the dinner by loudly declaring that all tech companies were frauds.
0:16:31 This was all fraud.
0:16:32 This was all bullshit.
0:16:33 None of this was real.
0:16:40 And he didn’t believe a single thing that anybody like me would ever say and then crossed his arms and then refused to speak for the rest of the three hours.
0:16:44 And, you know, that, that was, that was relatively characteristic of the experience.
0:16:50 You know, you know, I’ll tell you, you know, that, you know, that really shook me because that’s like, all right, you know, something has changed.
0:16:54 You know, the, the, the easy answer for what changed, of course, is Trump.
0:16:57 And so that was when the narrative, you know, so sort of spring of 2017.
0:17:01 So that was when the Facebook Cambridge Analytica narrative was really kicking in.
0:17:07 And, you know, and then, you know, so social media, the theory, the theory went, the social media had been compromised and gotten Trump elected.
0:17:10 And then that was when the Russiagate stuff was kicking in.
0:17:16 And so you’ve got a Russian spy in the White House and like all the other, you know, kind of, you know, that sort of political activation that took place at that time.
0:17:21 You know, which, and by the way, that political activation was like super concentrated in the places where the journalists live, right?
0:17:23 And so like Brooklyn was like ground zero for it.
0:17:31 You know, Manhattan, you know, Boston, you know, with, with, with, with the major universities there, which is where a lot of the, a lot of the big press were at the time.
0:17:39 And so, you know, they just, they just had this extremely high level of, of, of, of activated energy, which clearly was translating to rage.
0:17:42 By the way, we did, we did one other, I did one other thing that year.
0:17:44 I think it was that year, I think it was 2017.
0:17:47 We, we, we also, another thing we did was we did a media party every year.
0:17:53 You know, so we, we had this old fashioned view, you know, that if you throw them to the big party and, you know, give them free food and give them free alcohol, they might like you more.
0:17:56 And so we, we had our media party, I think later that year.
0:18:01 And, you know, and I, I kind of went against my better judgment, having experienced what I experienced earlier in the year.
0:18:07 And, and I remember three top tech journalists cornered me on the, on the Facebook topic, Facebook destroying democracy topic.
0:18:09 I just, and they were just like absolutely adamant.
0:18:12 They were just absolutely appalled that Facebook was not censoring more.
0:18:20 Like they were just like completely appalled that Facebook was not censoring, you know, much, had much, did not have much tougher censorship rules on what people could say.
0:18:23 And, and I kind of had an out-of-body experience where I’m like, you know, these are three reporters.
0:18:30 Like, you know, you know, in the old days, you know, 20 years ago, you know, reporters were the most strident defenders of the first amendment.
0:18:32 And now they were like demanding censorship.
0:18:34 And I, and I, and of course I couldn’t help myself.
0:18:37 I pointed that out and they got extremely upset.
0:18:39 And I was like, whoop, this is over.
0:18:44 So basically like from my, from my perspective, you know, different people have different views.
0:18:50 From my perspective is the world changed like really profoundly dramatically in 2017 and set off a whole cascading series of changes since.
0:18:53 But, you know, we’re, we, we, we’ve never gone back to the way things were in 2016 or before.
0:18:58 And, and, and, and I mean, we could speculate as to whether we ever will, but I, I, I doubt it at this point.
0:19:13 Yeah. And, and that, that was, you know, also when Trump started calling them the fake news, which, you know, that, and, and that was actually in response to the kind of journalists saying that Facebook was fake news.
0:19:16 And Trump said, well, no, you’re fake news.
0:19:23 And that, that, that to me was when it was like, okay, we’re on this side, you’re on that side.
0:19:30 It was no longer, there was no longer any pretense, I guess, of, you know, objectivity.
0:19:32 Objectivity was gone at that point.
0:19:33 Yeah.
0:19:38 It was, you know, it was fairly amazing because, you know, it’s like, look, I, like I voted in 2016, I voted for Hillary.
0:19:39 I supported Hillary publicly.
0:19:44 I’m like, I’m not like, you know, at that, you know, at that time, I’m like, I don’t understand why I’m getting, you know, tagged with this.
0:19:47 And, and, and literally it was, you know, it was, you know, you’re an idiot, you’re a dupe.
0:19:50 You know, you got played, you got hacked, you got, you know, you got hacked by the Russians.
0:20:00 You know, I, I went to Hillary’s first, first public appearance after, in 2017, after she, after she lost it at stage, she gave a talk at Stanford as her first kind of big public out, outing.
0:20:05 And she, you know, she said like 20 feet away from me on stage that, you know, Trump is only president because Vladimir Putin hacked Facebook.
0:20:06 Right.
0:20:09 You know, with, to insert fake news.
0:20:09 Right.
0:20:14 And so, you know, the, you know, so the unified kind of theory, you know, emerged around, around Russiagate.
0:20:25 And, you know, basically the, the, the tech companies were just like presumed guilty, even though, you know, we all at that time where it’s like, you know, 99.9%, you know, Democrats or, you know, Hillary supporters.
0:20:35 And so, yeah, and then, you know, look, people had a very, you know, basically people, people I know who went through that, you know, had two very, well, maybe three very different reactions to it.
0:20:42 One reaction was just like absolute terror of like, oh my God, like, you know, are the critics right?
0:20:48 And, you know, therefore, like, you know, all of the, you know, enormous pounding for censorship that then kicked in, including in the Valley and in many of the tech companies.
0:20:57 You know, you had other people who were like, oh my God, I’ve just seen behind the curtain, you know, like in the end of the Wizard of Oz and like, you know, these aren’t objective truth tellers, like there’s something else going on here.
0:20:59 And that was a very small number of people.
0:21:06 And then I think, you know, a lot of people entered a state of confusion of just not understanding the, the, the, you know, kind of how the world works and how the media works.
0:21:09 And that state of confusion for, I think for a lot of people actually probably still continues.
0:21:18 Yeah. And I think that, you know, one of the things that was interesting about that whole period was how much of it was Trump and not any of the facts.
0:21:28 So that, you know, first Obama clearly won in 2008 because of Facebook and he used it effectively and so forth.
0:21:40 And I think that the kind of internal knowledge of what happened from the kind of Facebook team was Trump was just way, way, way better at his usage of Facebook than Hillary was.
0:21:46 And Hillary used old techniques, Obama used new techniques, or Trump used new techniques.
0:22:01 Trump had the, the genius machine zone CEO working with him, who was like the kind of the best games distributor in the world, kind of working to distribute kind of Trump on Facebook.
0:22:05 And so, you know, that’s what actually happened.
0:22:11 You know, when the, when the Facebook team did the internal investigation, it was done by a guy who used to work for me, Alex Damos.
0:22:23 It was very earnest and very left wing, I would say, you know, what they found in terms of the quote unquote Russian hacking was just about effectively nothing.
0:22:24 Like there was nothing.
0:22:33 And so, but the dominant media narrative was that Facebook had been hacked by the Russians.
0:22:38 And I think like probably half the population still thinks that’s true, but it’s absolutely false.
0:22:46 It’s amazing how just in one election cycle, people turned on social media and free speech.
0:22:50 You were saying that, you know, Obama won thanks to it and people celebrated that.
0:22:52 People celebrated the Arab Spring.
0:22:55 Dick Costello called Twitter the free speech wing of the free speech party.
0:23:02 And just, you know, five years later, eight years later, oh, this whole, this whole free speech thing, you know, I don’t know about this anymore.
0:23:04 It’s cool.
0:23:12 Well, I mean, it shows you how polarizing Trump is too, you know, like it was all good until he got elected and then it was all bad.
0:23:13 Yeah.
0:23:18 Mark, maybe what does Martin Gurie bring to this analysis?
0:23:19 He’s really shaped your thinking here.
0:23:20 Yeah.
0:23:23 So Martin Gurie is a, is a good friend of ours and is a brilliant writer.
0:23:30 He spent 30 years in the CIA doing basically analysis of essentially regime change.
0:23:33 And, but he was in what was called the open source division for a long time.
0:23:36 And they, they, they were doing basically like global media monitoring.
0:23:43 And so he’s sort of a world expert at sort of the intersection of how the media operates and then kind of how changes happen in government and happen in political regimes.
0:23:51 And he wrote this book, I think actually pre-Trump, I think he wrote it in 20, I think he wrote it in the early 2010s and published it, self-published it originally, I think in 2015, if I recall correctly.
0:23:55 So kind of, so the book was kind of published at the same time that Trump was winning the nomination.
0:24:03 So it, it, you know, it, it, like it’s, it, it, it was very, it was very, it was very, it looks in hindsight, extremely prescient.
0:24:09 You know, yet even he, I think would, would say he, you know, he didn’t know, obviously that it was, the thesis was going to get proven as fast as it was.
0:24:21 By the way, the book is today available in a, in a formal edition by, from Stripe Press and you can buy it on Amazon and they have a really beautiful version of it with a, with a whole new section at the end on what happened since he wrote it.
0:24:29 But, um, it was very insightful and so it was, it was self-published on, on, on Kindle and then PDF bootlegs were kind of emailed around, uh, at the time.
0:24:36 Um, and it laid out this, basically this thesis, uh, which at the time sounded very radical and of course today just sounds like a description of what’s happening.
0:24:43 Um, and so the thesis basically, he focuses on this concept, the sort of, um, the sort of abstract concept of authority.
0:24:51 Um, and authority is, is, is not just somebody telling you what to do, but authority is basically any kind of centralized, um, uh, credentialed, uh,
0:24:55 uh, uh, uh, like authority figure, um, or like authoritative institution.
0:25:09 Um, so think, you know, somebody with a role in, in steering society and that might be anybody from, uh, you know, from a politician to a bureaucrat, uh, to a reporter, to a doctor, um, you know, to an expert, you know, credentialed expert of any kind.
0:25:15 So the, the, the, the people, and think of those just generally as like experts, um, and then, and then the other is, uh, institutional authority.
0:25:17 So the institutions that are supposed to guide our society.
0:25:24 And so that’s the government, government bureaucracies, the news organizations, the universities, um, foundations, NGOs, right?
0:25:29 Um, and, and, and by the way, like, and if you, and if you read the press, it’s actually very interesting.
0:25:34 If you, if you, if you read the press, you know, they, they, they, the, the, the standard form of article is expert says X, right?
0:25:42 Like, so the, the, you know, the go-to thing is always to basically say, you know, here’s, here’s this, here’s a way that the world works or something that happens according to an expert, right?
0:25:46 And, and the expert is a, is by definition, a credentialed expert, right?
0:25:47 So you’re not, you’re not allowed to be an independent expert.
0:25:51 You have to be a formal expert with the right, you know, the right diploma or the right certification.
0:26:03 And so the, and that, and that’s, that’s the linkage between the individual, uh, authority, individual authority figures and the institutions, which is the authority, the authority, the authoritative institutions, uh, certify the individuals, right?
0:26:09 So Harvard is the authoritative institution that certifies the experts who are professors and people with PhDs from Harvard and so forth and so on.
0:26:19 Um, and basically what he said was, he said all of that, everything I just described is basically an artifact of central, of centralization, um, and top-down, um, media.
0:26:31 Um, and so everything I just described is an artifact of, you know, the basically mass media, um, uh, you know, mass, mass education, centralized authority, the idea that there are a few really good universities that certify all the experts.
0:26:39 You know, the idea that there are a few, few large foundations that determine the future shape of society through their activism, the idea that there’s only one central government, um, right?
0:26:43 Um, you know, and there’s only a few politicians who are really in charge, right?
0:26:51 And so, um, so basically like that, that, that whole idea of authority, um, that you could basically trust and rely on is an artifact of the top-down centralized era.
0:26:57 Um, and that basically social media is kind of bottoms up peer-to-peer media, social media where people can just share, you know, with each other.
0:27:02 Um, uh, basically he made a very provocative claim at that point that that will basically destroy all authority.
0:27:09 Um, that, that basically that will ruin the reputation of all the certified experts and that that will basically destroy all of the authoritative institutions.
0:27:17 Um, and at, at first it’s like, it seemed like too radical of a thesis, which is, well, why will that, you know, just because people can talk openly about things like, why would that happen?
0:27:22 And he said, well, the reason is because none of these institutions are actually as perfect as they say they are, right?
0:27:24 They’re, they’re, they’re made up of people like anything else.
0:27:32 They’re right about some things, they’re wrong about other things, but to be authoritative, they project this image of, we are right 100% of the time.
0:27:34 You know, we, we are the authoritative source of truth.
0:27:38 Um, and, and he said, basically the, the, I’m going to use my metaphor here.
0:27:42 The, the social media is many things, but one of the things it is, is it’s an x-ray machine.
0:27:51 Um, and so when an expert, um, uh, you know, says something that turns out to be wrong, you know, in the old days, you know, nobody would necessarily write the story.
0:27:53 It’d be on page 34 or something in the new world.
0:27:55 It goes viral on social media.
0:28:05 And so the, the, the, the, the, the world that you experience with social media as a, as a consumer is completely different because what you’re seeing every day are, you know, dozens or hundreds of accounts about how the experts are wrong.
0:28:07 And he said, the thing is, they really are wrong.
0:28:12 Like, you know, now sometimes they’re accused of being wrong and they’re not, but like, they really are wrong a lot of the time because they’re people and they’re imperfect.
0:28:17 Um, and that they have basically built, they have basically built up these reputations that actually cannot be factually supported.
0:28:27 And that when people, you know, when, when, when populations realize that these authoritative sources are not actually correct all the time, uh, even though they have been claiming to be correct all the time.
0:28:31 You know, in essence, like they’ve written checks at the, you know, somebody said that your mouth writes checks, your body can’t cash.
0:28:39 Um, you know, they, you know, they’ve, they’ve written these checks about their, their, their, the quality of, of what they do that, that basically transparency doesn’t support.
0:28:43 Um, and so he said, inevitably you, you’ll basically see them crumb, you’ll see them crumble.
0:28:51 And, and, you know, one of the ways that you can see that very clearly is, uh, these large polling organizations like Gallup do these annual surveys of trust and institutions.
0:28:56 Um, and, and Gallup has done a big one for a long time that goes by every single class of like authoritative institution.
0:28:58 They go year by year, how much do you trust this thing?
0:29:06 And basically what you see essentially since Martin’s book came out, well, actually you see a long slide in institutional authority and trust that started actually in the 1970s.
0:29:13 And we could talk about that because it predates the internet, but then you see actually this, like basically this much faster collapse basically after 2015.
0:29:18 Um, and then in particular in the last three years, it’s just, the numbers have just caved in.
0:29:28 Um, and so the universities, for example, the, you know, their, their, their approval ratings in the, their sort of trust ratings for the population writ large have just, you know, completely cratered in the last three years, the medical profession.
0:29:33 Um, you know, the press, um, you know, many of the nonprofits, you know, the numbers are, are just collapsing.
0:29:38 And so, um, yeah, so it, it, yeah, it, you, you, you look back now and you’re like, oh, okay.
0:29:42 Yeah, that was, yes, that, that was a correct assessment that is actually playing out now.
0:29:45 Um, you know, a, a question from there would be like, how far does it go?
0:29:48 Um, and, you know, do the numbers literally converge to zero?
0:29:54 Um, and, and you have this interesting thing that’s preventing that from happening right now, which is more and more the numbers are partisan split.
0:29:58 Um, and so Democrats trust universities, Republicans don’t, you know, Democrats trust doctors.
0:30:04 Republicans, you know, Republicans don’t, um, or, or another version of this is, you know, who’s in the White House determines how people feel about the economy.
0:30:07 So, uh, when Biden was in the White House, Democrats felt great about the economy.
0:30:08 Republicans felt horrible.
0:30:10 Now that Trump’s in, Republicans feel great.
0:30:11 Democrats feel horrible.
0:30:13 There’s like a, just a straight inversion, uh, on.
0:30:16 Everything is partisan all the time.
0:30:27 Yeah, and, and so my, my, my, my point is that the partisanship is, I would argue the partisanship, the part, the partisanship, uh, is actually holding up the reputation of institutions that otherwise, where their, their ratings would, their, their, their trust ratings would literally go to zero.
0:30:29 Uh, which, which I think is probably what happens in the fullness of time.
0:30:33 Well, first off, what, what happened in the 70s, to, to give full context?
0:30:54 Yeah, so the, the, the, the, the, I would say there’s a, there’s a cultural argument, um, and the cultural argument has to do with basically the, you know, the social revolution in the 1960s, um, you know, and then it has to do with, uh, you know, especially Vietnam, um, and, you know, because Vietnam was just like basically, you know, gigantically controversial and, and, you know, sort of very discredited, uh, you know, for a long time.
0:30:55 And then obviously it ended very badly.
0:31:04 Um, and then Nixon, um, you know, Watergate, um, and then, um, and then just like, you know, reveals there were other things in the 70s at the time, the environmental movement.
0:31:06 It was revealing all these dirty secrets of industry.
0:31:10 The, um, you know, the church and Pike committee were revealing all these dirty secrets, the intelligence agencies.
0:31:14 And so, um, you know, you just kind of had this, you, you had kind of this activated social consciousness.
0:31:18 You had this new generation, the boomers that were like very, like politically activated, socially activated.
0:31:23 Um, and then you just had a, a lot of sort of data points that the institutions were going bad.
0:31:27 Um, and so that, you know, that’s one argument, um, that’s like the social cultural argument.
0:31:31 Um, you know, the other argument is actually, uh, the, a structural argument.
0:31:35 It’s, it’s, it’s when, uh, peak centralization started to collapse.
0:31:40 Um, and so our, our, um, our friend Balaji talks a lot about this concept of peak centralization.
0:31:50 And basically what he says is if you, if you look at basically, if you look at anything from governments to business to media, um, basically centralization in the world peaked in the 1950s.
0:31:55 Um, and so 1950s, the 1950s was at the point when you had the smallest number of countries in the history of the world.
0:31:58 Uh, total number of countries got down to like something like 60.
0:32:02 Um, you had the smallest number of, of media organizations.
0:32:09 Um, cause actually media going back before, you know, in the 18th and 19th centuries was actually much more decentralized, which, which we could talk about.
0:32:13 Um, but, but, but by the 1950s, it was this highly centralized environment that I talked about earlier.
0:32:17 Um, mass manufacturing had centralized production, um, right.
0:32:21 Um, public education had centralized, you know, the, the, the, the process of educating kids.
0:32:27 Um, and so you had all these areas of, of, of, of human activity that basically had been centralized in a small number of large organizations.
0:32:30 And, and, and when that happens, of course, those organizations get a tremendous amount of control.
0:32:35 Um, and so, for example, the editors at the major newspapers could absolutely decide what was news and what wasn’t.
0:32:38 And if they didn’t want something to be news, they just buried it.
0:32:40 Um, and it just, you know, didn’t matter.
0:32:46 And so, well, a famous example was, you know, what percentage of the U.S. population knew that FDR was in a wheelchair when he was president, right?
0:32:49 Um, or, or, you know, or what percentage knew all the stuff we now know Kennedy got up to.
0:32:54 Um, well, good thing that would never happen today with, uh, you know.
0:32:55 That would never, ever happen today.
0:32:56 Exactly.
0:32:58 Um, but, um.
0:33:00 Yeah, even the affairs that aren’t true get published to that.
0:33:01 Exactly.
0:33:10 So, um, so, so anyway, so, so, so, so, so, so that was, and so in, in, under peak centralization, you’re going to have maximum trust because you’re going to have basically the most information control.
0:33:11 Um, right?
0:33:13 You just, you’re not going to have the alternative point of view.
0:33:19 And so you’re just, everybody’s, you know, the theory goes, at least you’re going to have a much higher level of unanimity, which is going to come across in the surveys as trust.
0:33:21 And people aren’t going to have anything to compare to.
0:33:26 And then, and then basically the argument goes in the 1970s is when the media landscape started to decentralize.
0:33:31 Um, and so you had the, and this is sort of 70s into the 80s, I would say, because it took time.
0:33:42 But you had the rise of, uh, talk radio, uh, AM talk radio, um, and in particular, I was, you know, so Rush Limbaugh had a major impact on the information landscape because he was a completely different kind of voice than you were getting in the traditional press.
0:33:47 Um, and then you also had the rise of, um, tell the common points out, you had the rise of paperback books.
0:33:52 Um, and, and so you actually, the, the, the cost of books actually dropped dramatically in that period.
0:33:58 Um, and, and you could have, you know, you could do cheap paperback books on many, many topics that you could never get through the hardback, uh, publishing apparatus.
0:34:04 Um, newsletters, uh, mimeograph newsletters, photocopy newsletters actually became a big thing, uh, in that period.
0:34:10 And then, um, and then, and then cable TV emerged, uh, you know, kind of late in the 1970s and in the 1980s and started to really blow the doors open.
0:34:19 Oh, and then, by the way, I mean, even, I don’t know how to, how to measure this, but even, uh, um, uh, early computers, um, not so much the internet, but like bulletin board services.
0:34:27 And then, uh, CompuServe and Prodigy, um, you know, were, were getting, uh, created back then, which were, which were kind of pre-internet, you know, dial-up information services.
0:34:32 Uh, anyway, so you had like six or eight different technological changes that were happening that were kind of decentralizing media.
0:34:38 And then you kind of wonder, it’s like, okay, if, if I’m, if I’m a trusting individual, right?
0:34:42 If, if I’m inherently trusting individual, I’ll just, I’m just going to watch the five o’clock news and I’m just going to believe what they tell me.
0:34:45 But if I’m an inherently untrusting individual, I’m not going to do that.
0:34:49 And I’m going to seek out a newsletter or a paperback book or a talk radio, you know, something like that.
0:34:52 I’m going to seek out a cable, you know, new cable TV show.
0:34:54 I’m going to seek out a new source of information.
0:34:58 Of course, those sources of information need to differentiate themselves, uh, you know, from the mainstream.
0:35:00 And so they’re, they’re going to come up with these alternative narratives.
0:35:08 And, and, and so therefore the rise of the new technology equals the rise of a new audience equals the rise of an, of a new belief system that inherently is, is, is not trusting.
0:35:10 And so, so that, that, that would be the structural view.
0:35:13 And accelerating all the way to social media.
0:35:18 One, one question, Mark, you also like to ask is, uh, is social media the engine or the camera?
0:35:30 Is it sort of, um, creating new behavior or kind of just revealing behavior that was in that, you know, this, uh, I remember one interview you did with Kara and Reid Hoffman, I think around sort of the 2018, 2019 time.
0:35:39 And, and they’re both sort of saying, Hey, when can we go back to an era where we all had civil conversations and, and all got along and the sort of golden era.
0:35:43 And, and you were like, Hey, maybe it wasn’t, uh, it’s not as simple as, as we’re making it here.
0:35:47 Yeah. So that, that was also, I think that was also probably 2017.
0:35:50 And that was my, that was my last onstage appearance at a mainstream industry conference.
0:35:55 Um, and I knew, I knew it was, that was another one where I didn’t realize what I was getting into.
0:35:57 Cause Reid Hoffman had been a good friend of mine for a long time.
0:36:00 And, you know, Kara and I had been kind of hot and cold for a long time.
0:36:02 Um, but, um, you know, she’d done a lot of great work earlier in her career.
0:36:06 And I had, I’d known her for a long time and she’s running this very important conference.
0:36:10 And so I, I was excited to be, you know, on stage with Reid and my good friend Reid and with, with Kara.
0:36:15 And, you know, they just, you know, they, they, they, they both had become extreme, you know, they both had become extremely politically activated.
0:36:20 And so they, they both had, I would say, extremely, extremely negative, uh, you know, kind of responses to Trump.
0:36:26 Um, and, you know, Reid, Reid’s census, of course, become a, you know, one of the largest donors in American history for left-wing politics.
0:36:27 And of course, Kara’s Kara’s Kara.
0:36:29 People can draw their own judgments.
0:36:32 Um, many hours of YouTube video to watch.
0:36:40 Um, so, uh, I got on stage, you know, they basically started, you know, they, all of a sudden there’s like this, like extremely aggressive, I mean, they, they were attacked.
0:36:48 They were attacking me as much, but there was like an extremely aggressive kind of attack on, you know, basically, it was the beginning of the tech is enabling fascism, you know, kind of wave that they’ve, they’ve both gotten very into.
0:36:53 Um, and, and, and, you know, and again, they, they, you know, you kind of tell this, you know, you kind of tell the simplified version of the story.
0:36:57 And I, I even did a little bit of a, my earlier answer, which is, you know, at one point we trusted the media, now we don’t.
0:37:01 Well, number one, like, did we ever really trust the media that much?
0:37:02 Like, we say we did, but did we?
0:37:06 And my, my favorite example of that is, uh, the, sort of the legend of this guy, Walter Cronkite.
0:37:14 Um, and so, Walter Cronkite was a network news anchor for, uh, CBS News and for, you know, decades, he was considered the authoritative source of information.
0:37:16 He, he was like the peak, the peak reporter.
0:37:19 Like, if you can’t trust Walter Cronkite, like, who can you trust?
0:37:29 And so there was this famous moment, people talk about this, they, there was this famous moment in 1968, uh, it’s a Vietnam War had been going for, I think, four years at that point with America’s involvement in Vietnam, or maybe even five.
0:37:31 Um, and it was already going bad.
0:37:37 And, um, and Walter Cronkite did this, you know, went to Vietnam and came back and he did this thing where he came out against the Vietnam War.
0:37:44 Um, and, and it was, it was this, and it was this, it was this truth, you know, the legend, the legend is it was this truth to power moment, right?
0:37:48 Which is like, you know, you’ve got this authoritative source finally telling the American people the truth of this war.
0:37:52 is a disaster. But of course, this raises the question of like, well, he came out against the
0:37:58 Vietnam War in 1968, but it had already been going for four years. So like, what was his point of view
0:38:03 on the war prior to 1968? And of course, nobody wants to open that box, right? Because if you open
0:38:06 that box and if you go look at those, you know, if you can get access even to the four years of
0:38:11 network news broadcasts from 1964 to 1968, of course, what you’d find is he and everybody else
0:38:17 like him was 100% supportive of it. Right. And so, you know, it’s the whole thing. And of course,
0:38:20 and of course, the other thing was, you know, the media, you know, in those days, 1968 was, you
0:38:27 know, 1968 happened to be the presidential election year, right? And so the Vietnam War between 1964
0:38:34 and 1968 was a democratic war, right? It was a Kennedy Johnson project. If Nixon were to win in 1968,
0:38:37 it would become a Republican war, which is what it turned into. But it started as a democratic war.
0:38:42 And so he is actually, he flipped on it. He flipped from positive, negative on it at precisely the
0:38:45 point when the country flipped from a democratic president to Republican president. So probably
0:38:51 just a coincidence. Maybe not. And so, and, you know, and then there, by the way, there were huge
0:38:54 disputes in those days because there were a lot of people who were like, well, you’re betraying, you
0:38:57 know, you’re, you’re, the other point of view was like, if the media is coming out against a war with
0:39:01 American soldiers in the field, like you’re betraying those, those soldiers. And, you know, you had
0:39:04 celebrities who were going to Vietnam who were, you know, talking about how, you know, evil the whole
0:39:07 thing was and how great the North Vietnamese communists were. And, you know, are they sympathizing
0:39:11 with the enemy? And so, you know, even in those, you know, in those days, it’s not like everybody
0:39:16 just, uh, uh, uh, just, just, just, just, just agreed with everybody. Um, and so I, you know,
0:39:19 there, there, there, there is a lot of myth-making that takes place. Oh, and you know, the other
0:39:23 part of myth-making that takes place from that era is Watergate. Um, and so the way the Watergate
0:39:27 story gets told is you had these, you know, two plucky young, you know, reporters, um, Woodward
0:39:30 and Bernstein of the Washington Post, and they were able to, you know, kind of unspool the
0:39:37 story of, of presidential corruption, you know, take down Nixon, um, in what, 73, 74. Um,
0:39:41 you know, for a very, the, the, the whole, the whole story, if you’ve read the book or if
0:39:44 you, if you’ve even seen the movie, the whole story is they had this, like, they, they, they
0:39:47 cultivated this inside source to the government, who was this truth teller who, you know, gave
0:39:52 them all the secret information, who was this unimpeachable source called Deep Throat. Um,
0:39:56 you know, 30 years later, uh, we, we finally learned the identity of Deep Throat. It turns
0:40:01 out he was the number three executive in the, in the FBI. Right. Um, and, and specifically
0:40:05 in Hoover’s FBI. Right. And so the, the, this was like, you know, this was, he was like the
0:40:09 agent of what all these same people considered to be basically organized fascism. Um, you
0:40:12 who, you know, and, and, and now there’s like a completely different interpretation of Watergate,
0:40:18 which it was a war between the FBI and Nixon and the FBI took out Nixon. Um, and so like,
0:40:21 you know, even, even in those days, like how much of this was, oh, and then of course it
0:40:24 also turns out Bob Woodward had been a Navy intelligence officer prior to being a reporter
0:40:28 who had actually met, uh, Mark Felt, the Deep Throat source, uh, actually sitting on the,
0:40:32 on the couch outside of the Situation Room in the White House. Um, and so, you know, had
0:40:36 Felt recruited him, you know, to be an, you know, to be an asset, like what exactly was
0:40:41 the relationship? Um, and so, you know, even, even in those days, um, you know, there, there,
0:40:45 you know, there, there was more controversy than the sort of, you know, um, you know, uh,
0:40:48 the sort of, uh, rose colored glasses, you know, kind of, kind of, kind of view would
0:40:51 have it. Uh, you know, but, but to your question, the difference is like in those
0:40:53 days you could speculate about all this. You could, you know, talk to your friends and
0:40:57 neighbors about it. You could complain about it, whatever, in your private life, but you
0:41:00 couldn’t do anything about it. Um, you know, in the new world, you can, you can do something
0:41:05 about it, which is you can go online, um, and you could post, um, and, you know, yeah, and
0:41:08 it can go viral. And, and, and your point on engine versus camera, you know, that’s when
0:41:12 the camera turns into an engine, um, right. Which is you, you could, you could not only see
0:41:17 things, um, that you couldn’t see before, but you can, you can also, you know, help other
0:41:22 people see those things. Now, look, having said that, like, I’m not like, I, I think, I think
0:41:26 the internet contains multitudes. Um, and so, you know, is the internet just a camera
0:41:29 of things that you need to know that are true? No, there’s obviously huge amounts of, you
0:41:33 know, there’s the internet has full spectrum of things that are clearly fake. The things
0:41:36 are clearly real to everything in the middle. You know, I think there’s a very large number
0:41:40 of, of, uh, you know, there’s lots of less, as they say, ops. Um, you know, there’s lots
0:41:43 of propaganda. There’s lots of, uh, you know, campaigns of different kinds. Um, you know,
0:41:47 it’s a very, it’s a very complicated environment. It’s, it’s no single thing. Um, but for sure,
0:41:51 it is an x-ray machine and then for sure it is also, which is a camera. And then for
0:41:54 sure, it’s also a, an engine. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a way to actually drive change
0:41:56 in the information environment that people didn’t used to have.
0:42:01 Ben, I’m curious to hear more, more of your perspective on kind of your, your personal
0:42:05 evolution. You mentioned earlier that, that your father, uh, was a journalist and a, and a
0:42:09 political writer as well. You know, I’ve, I’ve seen you as mostly focused on, on, uh,
0:42:14 technology and, and, and business. But when, when did you start to realize that things
0:42:17 were, were changing in the media or that we were sort of entering a hyper-partisan era
0:42:21 or what were kind of your sort of inflection points in thinking about these topics?
0:42:27 A big thing that had an effect on me was actually, uh, my father’s, the beginning of his conversion
0:42:34 from the left to the right. So he was, uh, the editor of the editor in chief of Ramparts
0:42:40 magazine, which was the kind of the magazine of the new left back in the seventies. Um, you
0:42:46 know, he dropped out of, uh, politics for quite a while. Um, I think about eight years. Uh,
0:42:52 and then, you know, he, he was a journalist during that time. And one of the things that
0:42:58 happened that was, uh, kind of, you know, to Mark’s point about, um, the trusted experts
0:43:05 and the authorities, uh, and the institutions was he got tipped by a very good reporter from
0:43:12 the San Francisco Chronicle by the name of Randy Schultz about this, um, uh, potential, uh,
0:43:21 pandemic, um, uh, in the, in 1981, um, that was starting in San Francisco, uh, where kind
0:43:28 of gay men were kind of getting this very deadly disease. Um, and, uh, you know, and, but Randy
0:43:32 couldn’t write the story about it because there was so much pressure from the institutions to
0:43:39 not make it a gay disease, but the, the kind of right public policy at the time was to close
0:43:44 particularly the bath houses. So they had these things that were at bath houses in San Francisco
0:43:50 where, you know, gay men would kind of hook up and that kind of thing. Uh, and so they all knew about
0:43:54 this disease. There were only about a hundred cases. I think at the time it was a very small
0:43:59 number. And they were like, we got to close the bath houses now. Um, but everybody in the
0:44:04 medical establishment was afraid to do it, uh, you know, and everybody kind of, the press was kind
0:44:11 of very anti it. And so my father, you know, being my father and how he is just wrote the story and
0:44:16 was called whitewash and it was in California magazine. Um, kind of telling the story of this
0:44:22 coverup of this, you know, how this disease was spread. Um, and, you know, it was like the kind of
0:44:31 end of so many of his friends, um, you know, on the left. And then, you know, we got, there were
0:44:39 protests. Um, they, I, I, you know, they, they, they protested, uh, around, you know, our house and
0:44:45 that kind of thing that he was a homophobe and all this kind of thing. Um, but, you know, look, and
0:44:51 then Fauci who was actually in charge of, uh, you know, public health policy at the time kind of
0:44:58 reoriented it around, um, no, no, no, no, it’s not, uh, just gay sex. It’s any kind of sex and it’s,
0:45:03 you know, intravenous drug use and this kind of thing. Um, and the net net of that was like
0:45:10 the, you know, the, the, the bath houses weren’t closed and so forth. And it did become an epidemic,
0:45:15 uh, you know, where, you know, unlike COVID, it didn’t have to, you know, it was only spread
0:45:22 through, it was spread to like 98% or 95% through, uh, gay sex and, you know, the rest for intravenous
0:45:29 drug use and almost none, it turns out through heterosexual sex. Um, but we didn’t really address
0:45:37 it because of these politics. And so it kind of really gave me a good lesson that, okay, uh, you know,
0:45:42 the experts might not be true. And then, um, you know, we were always, you know, growing up in
0:45:48 Berkeley, we were always on the side of, you know, the left is like, well, you know, the left can do
0:45:54 very bad things as well. I’m like, you know, there’s a certain, there’s a certain level of like
0:45:59 politics and partisanship where you don’t even care about the people you care about. Like, you know,
0:46:04 the saddest thing in the world, we’re seeing all these people die. I mean, in the 80s, like if you went
0:46:08 through that, it was just horrible. Like, you know, so many, you know, people you knew and so forth, the
0:46:16 young people, healthy people all of a sudden die and it was preventable. And the people who were on their
0:46:23 side, like the pro-gay community were the ones who caused it. Like that whole thing, um, just made me very,
0:46:34 very aware, uh, of how, like the, the whole central system, uh, worked. Um, and, uh, I’d just say it’s quite
0:46:34 eye-opening.
0:46:40 Yeah. That whole story, by the way, is in David’s, David Horowitz’s book, uh, called Radical Son. Um, which is one of the
0:46:42 most, uh, it’s one of the most shattering.
0:46:44 And Prussian books, by the way.
0:46:45 Yeah. Yeah.
0:46:45 Yeah.
0:46:49 Yeah. But it’s an, it’s an absolutely shattering story given, given the, you know, there’s a
0:46:52 counterfactual universe in which, um, you know, it had been controlled and contained.
0:46:56 It really could have been, you know, like the whole flatten the curve thing on COVID was hard
0:47:00 because it spread so fast. But AIDS did not, like, if you look at it, it spread actually quite
0:47:06 slowly, um, you know, by comparison. So, like, those kinds of measures would have worked or, you
0:47:09 know, would have prevented probably 75% of the deaths.
0:47:10 Yeah.
0:47:16 In, in the same way that, uh, Peter Thiel’s book in 1995 was maybe, you know, a couple decades
0:47:23 prescient into sort of, uh, chronicling college campus activism. It seems like, uh, your, your
0:47:27 father’s work was, uh, you know, a few decades prescient. Uh, you know, I’m hearing for this
0:47:33 for the first time, but, you know, Fauci contributing to a noble lie, uh, or, or even something adjacent
0:47:35 to that, you know, decades before is, uh.
0:47:41 And look, I, I mean, I think Fauci, you know, whether you like him or not, he is, I think he’s,
0:47:46 he’s a bit of a sociopath. I mean, he is completely divorced from the truth. Uh,
0:47:51 and he feels no guilt about it. They, you know, he never felt any guilt about the whole
0:47:54 AIDS thing, despite being like a huge catalyst in that.
0:47:59 We’ve been talking about how the, the legacy media playbook was being disrupted by the internet.
0:48:05 And this is where it might be interesting to return back to the Trump phenomenon, less in
0:48:11 terms of the, the politics, but more in terms of the, the, the media impact, because it feels
0:48:16 like he was a part of a, of a new playbook. You know, Trump in the nineties was very different
0:48:21 than Trump in the mid, mid two thousands, um, or 2010s. And, and that same new playbook,
0:48:27 uh, that was sort of native to, to social media helped influence perhaps Elon, perhaps some
0:48:31 others. Mark, when you describe, what was this new playbook?
0:48:35 So I think Trump is a bridge figure. Um, I actually think Trump, with respect to like
0:48:40 media, um, the media, the way media works, I think Trump is a bridge figure. Um, and that
0:48:43 we’re going to see new variations from here that are going to be very interesting, but he’s a
0:48:47 bridge figure, which is he, he, you know, he’s of the generation that grew up, uh, you know,
0:48:52 with television, newspapers, you know, absolutely dominant. Um, and so he’s always had a very
0:48:56 intertwined relationship with newspapers and, and with television. Um, and obviously that culminated
0:49:00 him in having his own, you know, uh, top rated television show for 15 years, but also he was,
0:49:05 you know, he was, he was, he’s a, he was, Trump was a standard story in newspapers starting in like
0:49:09 1975. Um, I think the New York Times press profiled him in 75. And then he was a fixture,
0:49:15 as they say, in like New York media world and tabloids and major newspapers and entertainment
0:49:19 television and everything else. Um, you know, all the way through cable TV, he was on cable news all the
0:49:24 time. You know, he’d go on Oprah, um, uh, you know, when, when, and that was a big deal. Um,
0:49:27 and so he was always super intertwined and he talked to them constantly, by the way,
0:49:30 you know, he would, he would always, many stories in those days of, of Trump calling up and talking
0:49:34 to reporters and taking phone calls from reporters, um, you know, and, and, and the whole thing.
0:49:38 And so he’s, he’s got that element to it. And by the way, he continues that. It’s actually very
0:49:41 interesting. He, it’s very interesting to watch. Uh, this is one of the things that surprised me about
0:49:48 his new term, um, is he has opened up the Oval Office to the, uh, to the legacy press to an
0:49:54 extraordinary degree. Um, and so he has the love, hate relationship. It really is. It really is. And if,
0:49:56 if you, if you talk to reporters, by the way, if you talk to reporters at like, you know,
0:49:59 at these major newspapers, you know, kind of off the record, um, you know, they’ll tell you,
0:50:04 he calls them all the time. Um, and a lot of them have his cell phone number and he’ll pick up the
0:50:07 calls and he’ll talk to them and, and, you know, that he’s a source for a lot of stories. So he does
0:50:11 talk to them, um, even though he, he complains about them and then he, he’s done, you know, I don’t
0:50:15 know what the number is, but he’s done multiples, you know, he’s done wildly more, you know,
0:50:20 press questions, press conferences, press briefings in the first, you know, whatever, 70 days of,
0:50:24 of, of, of his new term than, you know, the, than the previous presidents did for, you know,
0:50:27 their entire, you know, for their, their entire runs. And, you know, he’s constantly talking to
0:50:31 them on, on, on Air Force One and he’s talking to them in the white house and he’s invited them to
0:50:35 the cabinet meetings and he’s having them over for dinner. And so, so he, he, he still has, he has
0:50:40 one foot kind of squarely in the kind of described as kind of legacy, uh, media world. But then the,
0:50:44 the, the other side of it is, you know, not only, not only was he a pioneer in going direct and
0:50:48 that he, you know, literally had his own, you know, TV show, um, with the apprentice, but,
0:50:51 but also, um, he was, people not forget, he wasn’t actually an early adopter on Twitter,
0:50:58 uh, for a public figure of, of that magnitude. Um, and so he started tweeting actively probably in,
0:51:04 I forget, like 2010 or 2011, which was, and that was still the like social media’s, you know,
0:51:09 what did your cat have for breakfast? Um, especially Twitter, like still people weren’t quite sure what
0:51:13 they thought of it. Um, and he leaned into it hard and, and, and there’s this, you know, kind of running
0:51:17 joke now, right. Where there, where there’s a Trump tweet for everything like, right. So, so anything that
0:51:20 happens, there was like a Trump tweet in like 2013, where like he said it or predicted it or
0:51:25 argued it. Um, right. And it’s just because like, he actually, and I, I don’t even know, I, I don’t
0:51:29 actually like to find out someday, but I actually don’t know who, who, like who got him spun up on
0:51:35 this or did he figure this all out himself? Um, but, um, you know, he, he became a true early adopter.
0:51:39 And so by, by the time the, um, so by the time the campaign started, he had already been a very,
0:51:44 you know, he was maybe the most kind of Twitter aware and Twitter sensitive kind of major celebrity
0:51:49 like that public figure like that. Um, you know, for probably four years, even prior to running for
0:51:54 office. Probably the first, certainly the first prominent politician that wrote his own tweets,
0:51:58 right? Like that, that, the only thing that was very, very different about him was that, I mean,
0:52:04 for better or worse, he’d write these, you know, uh, tweets that clearly came from him that, you know,
0:52:10 often with misspellings and all that kind of thing. Whereas like, if you look at, you know,
0:52:14 the presidential, uh, you know, Obama’s Twitter handle or Biden’s Twitter handle,
0:52:17 they’re clearly written by somebody else for the most part.
0:52:20 Yes. Uh, I mean, you know, and you get these famous Trump tweets, like, you know,
0:52:21 I’ve never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.
0:52:28 And you’re just like, you know, that’s a good point. I don’t think I have either.
0:52:33 And then, uh, you know, cause he’s legendary for drinking Diet Coke. And then he did this follow-up
0:52:36 where he’s like, I don’t know, it was like, uh, it was 2015 when he was running for president.
0:52:40 I guess somebody from the Coca-Cola company got mad at him or something. Cause he was always talking
0:52:43 about Coke. And he tweeted and he said, yeah, it’s like the Coca-Cola company is mad at me.
0:52:45 Uh, but that’s okay. I’ll keep drinking that garbage.
0:52:51 So he was like the OG shit poster troll.
0:52:56 Yeah. Shit posting. Right. And so it’s this level of, it’s this level of, I mean, it’s really,
0:52:59 really remarkable. It’s this level of like complete engagement and comfort in the legacy media and
0:53:03 then completely, uh, completely comfortable in the new media environment. Of course, you know,
0:53:08 culminating and literally starting his own Twitter competitor. Um, right. Um, and so like,
0:53:12 he’s got a foot in both camps, but I just, I describe that because I think he’s, I think he’s a,
0:53:15 he’s a very important bridge figure, but he’s a bridge figure. Um, I think there are internet
0:53:20 native politicians that haven’t emerged yet. Um, and I think we’re getting, you know, glimpses of that
0:53:25 with AOC and with, I think, uh, with president Bukele in El Salvador. Um, Jasmine Crockett,
0:53:30 Jasmine Crockett, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re getting these glimmers of what the kind of,
0:53:33 there are going to be politicians 10, 20 years from now where it’s going to be like,
0:53:36 oh, they took the, they took the Trump, you know, cause time will pass and things would get refined.
0:53:40 And so they will have taken the Trump playbook that they will, at some point, I think completely
0:53:44 disconnect from legacy media, um, and just run like a completely internet play. I actually think
0:53:48 that hasn’t happened yet. Um, now I’m, I’m sure Trump would argue that you don’t need to do that.
0:53:51 You can actually do both, but I do think there’s probably a pure form of it coming.
0:54:00 Yeah. And, and say more about the, the style that, that Trump and, and maybe Elon and others,
0:54:06 the sort of evolution has, has followed where it seems, um, like you’re less trying to be,
0:54:12 you know, unifying to everybody and more trying to, uh, you know, appeal to one specific tribe very
0:54:16 deeply and more perhaps consistent with the fragmentation or, or, or hyper partisanship
0:54:23 that’s, that’s permeated everything. Yeah. I think, I think a big part of that is the, um,
0:54:33 the Trump’s not a professional politician. Um, and so almost every politician outside of Trump,
0:54:38 like a huge number of them are like, their careers are in politics. Um, and when you’re in politics,
0:54:43 you get very intense media training around, you know, what you can say, what you can’t say,
0:54:48 how to position things, never answer the question you’re asked, only answer the question that you
0:54:53 want to, that you wish they would have asked. Like Mark and I have been through this media training.
0:55:01 It’s super sharp. And then you have a large constituency around you, a large staff that if
0:55:07 you ever go outside of that, they, um, you know, they correct you, they reprimand you, they retrain
0:55:12 you like, like, like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a real system and process, um, which has basically
0:55:18 resulted in, you know, most politicians really lacking, uh, what you would call authenticity.
0:55:28 Um, and Trump being Trump is not listening to any, like, he’s just literally saying what’s on his mind,
0:55:37 um, all the time, every time. And that actually works much better in kind of the modern sort of,
0:55:44 uh, social media world. So it’s, it’s like a big part of it, I think as a function of that,
0:55:49 he’s not trained in this business at all, which is part of the reason why I think a lot of people
0:55:55 don’t like him, um, is because he doesn’t follow any of the protocol that you’re used to. He’s just
0:56:03 so uncomfortably unusual. Uh, and, you know, so that’s a little bit of a, uh, a two etched sword on
0:56:07 that. Yeah. No, no, I agree with everything you just said, but I’d also add what he, what he was
0:56:13 trained on was he was trained in reality television. Yeah. Right. Um, and so I have not been on reality
0:56:17 TV, but my understanding is if you’re trained in reality TV, like you, your mission is to create
0:56:21 drama. Right. It’s like, it’s like the opposite, it’s right. It’s the opposite training, right?
0:56:26 Your, your mission, right. Your mission is to be as interesting as possible. Um, and provocative as
0:56:29 possible. And as controversial as possible. Right. And as controversial as possible. And then of course,
0:56:33 the other thing he was trained in was professional wrestling. Um, which is the, you know, which,
0:56:36 and then I mean that in full seriousness, which is he would, you know, he was, he’s been very close
0:56:40 friends with the McMahons for a long time. Um, you know, Linda McMahon is a cabinet secretary.
0:56:43 Vince McMahon is one of his, you know, long, long time friends. Um, and he was actually,
0:56:47 Trump is the only presidential candidate in history who was actually in the world wrestling
0:56:53 federation hall of fame. Um, cause he was famously actually in a WWF match actually fighting, um,
0:56:57 which, which is on YouTube. And so, and, and, and the way I would describe it, Ben, see if you
0:57:03 agree with this is, um, like reality TV, like the Kardashians is like, is basically, um,
0:57:08 it’s like professional wrestling for women. And then, um, professional wrestling is like reality
0:57:13 TV for men. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s essentially, essentially right. Yeah.
0:57:17 Right. Exactly. And, and they, they grew up together, right? Both reality TV and professional
0:57:20 wrestling grew up together in this sort of new alternate media landscape. They were both very
0:57:25 controversial for a long time. You know, reality TV. Right. Pseudo real entertainment.
0:57:31 Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. Or maybe the most real thing, you know. Yeah. So yeah,
0:57:35 our friend Rick Rubin says that these are actually the most real things, not the least real things.
0:57:39 It’s like, if you think professional wrestling is fake, just wait until you read the, read the
0:57:45 newspaper. Um, so, um, but, um, you know, he, he, he, he was, you know, he, he was, you know,
0:57:49 he literally was a master of both reality TV with The Apprentice and also a master of, of, of,
0:57:52 of, uh, of professional wrestling. And to your point, Ben, like that, that’s a completely
0:57:56 different playbook, right? That, that’s a, that’s a playbook. That’s a playbook that, you know,
0:58:00 for better, for worse, masks much better to the new media environment, which is
0:58:05 personality driven, um, right. Individual over corporation, right. You, you don’t, you don’t
0:58:09 care. Like if you’re following WWF or reality TV, you’re not talking about, you know, brand
0:58:13 names. You’re talking about the people, um, to the point where the people actually then have
0:58:17 their own products. Right. Um, and you know, for example, you know, Kim Kardashian now has
0:58:19 this hugely successful line of women’s, you know, clothing, you know, multi-billion dollar
0:58:24 business. And many of these other, uh, you know, stories do as well. Um, but you, you,
0:58:28 individuals over corporate, individuals over corporate brands, and then, and then authenticity
0:58:34 over fakeness. Um, uh, it, right. What you see is what you get over, um, uh, over, over
0:58:40 plasticity and then, um, and then drama over, um, drama over, yeah, like heightened drama over
0:58:46 suppressed drama. Um, uh, and then, um, and then, and then, and then, um, and then, and then,
0:58:48 and then we’ll, we’ll get to this more, I know, but then, you know, going direct, right.
0:58:53 Which is, you know, a big thing that makes both reality TV work and that makes professional
0:58:57 wrestling work is that the, the key people involved in them have these direct relationships
0:59:00 with the audience, um, that are just completely different. You know, they, they, they didn’t
0:59:04 make their brands by being on network TV. They made their brands, uh, or being in profiled
0:59:08 newspapers, they made their brands, you know, in large part by going direct or like a very
0:59:14 obscure cable station, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense that in a supply constrained
0:59:20 world, you’d want to stay out of drama and in a, in a, you know, when the internet shifts
0:59:25 the sort of, um, the structural dynamics such that that demand is the scarcity, you’d want
0:59:31 to create drama, uh, to, to compete with all the other new voices that are emerging. So, so
0:59:36 with that, maybe let’s go more into. And by the way, this is a very, that point is so
0:59:47 important because so much of the extreme partisanship is caused by that, like the, either aversion
0:59:53 or attraction to the extreme drama, as opposed to specific policies. Like it’s kind of a, a
0:59:58 very interesting thing where now on the internet, everybody’s going to all Trump’s policies and
1:00:04 going back and having like Obama talk about the border or, you know, uh, tariffs or, or any
1:00:08 of the, or manufacturing, reshoring, manufacturing, all these kinds of ideas. And so you’re like,
1:00:12 well, the idea, if the ideas are the same, like, why is everybody so mad at Trump? Well,
1:00:20 it’s what you’re saying. It’s, he’s high drama and, you know, they want like stability, low drama.
1:00:26 And, and, and that’s more of the divide than the actual political positions in a lot of cases.
1:00:33 Like Trump being like pro-peace used to be like a very strong left-wing position, but not in
1:00:37 the way he is. And so that’s an important distinction.
1:00:42 Yeah. It’s a, so someone said something like, oh, we’re trying to figure out what the, what the new
1:00:46 left is all about. Maybe let’s just see whatever Trump, whatever positions Trump takes, that’ll be
1:00:49 the, whatever the opposite is, that that’ll be what the, the new left is.
1:00:54 Yeah. Which has been a very effective trick for him because he’s kind of taken over traditional,
1:01:02 uh, positions of the democratic party. Um, which has been kind of a, an effective political tool,
1:01:09 but the way he does it is he takes this high drama, um, reality TV approach to that issue. And then all
1:01:15 of a sudden it’s his issue and he wins it. And then, you know, he can corner them into a very
1:01:20 niche set of issues, uh, which they hang on to, um, whatever men and women supports, all that kind of
1:01:26 thing. Yeah. Kamala is for they, them, uh, yeah, that, that, you know, Trump is for you. There’s a
1:01:31 great, great advertisement to, to that effect. Mark, talk, talk about life, the movie, cause I think it,
1:01:33 it gets at some of these, uh, these ideas.
1:01:38 Neil Gabler. That’s a great, that’s a great book by the way. Yeah. So this is one of the great,
1:01:43 one of the great books in media theory. Um, so the author is Neil Gabler, um, and the book is called
1:01:48 life, the movie. Um, and it’s one of these books where you read it and you’re like, half the time
1:01:51 you’re like, this is all obvious. And the other half, you’re like, oh my God, like this is all just
1:01:54 getting started. And this is like really profound. And I have to really think about this much harder.
1:01:59 Um, so the book is from like 28 years ago, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the book,
1:02:04 the book was written, uh, Gabler’s Gabler is a, um, sort of journalist, uh, writer. Um, he’s did a
1:02:09 big biography about Disney and says, he’s kind of very into, you know, Hollywood entertainment media.
1:02:14 Um, and so, but this was his kind of theory book and, and, and it, it came out. Yeah. It was like
1:02:19 the late nineties, um, or like 2000, right around that time. And it, it really built in, in, it really
1:02:24 built on what had happened in the, in, in the nineties on two mega stories, uh, which are, you know,
1:02:27 somewhat forget forgotten now, but were mega, mega, mega, mega stories at the time, which was the
1:02:33 Clinton Lewinsky affair on the one hand, and then the OJ, uh, case on the other hand. Um, and, and for
1:02:38 people who weren’t around then, um, both of those stories were just like absolute saturation bombing
1:02:42 of the media. Um, and, and, and, and specifically cable television, uh, cable news really came into its
1:02:46 own kind of during that period. And it was those two stories. And you, you could basically, as a cable
1:02:50 news station, you could just do 24 seven coverage of OJ or 24 seven coverage of Clinton Lewinsky and
1:02:53 drive ratings. So there were, there were kind of these mega stories and they, and they were these
1:02:57 stories that played out over years, right? Cause all these twists and turns and who was
1:03:00 telling the truth and who was lying and the accusations and the, you know, the conspiracy
1:03:04 theories and, you know, did the LAPD plant all the evidence and, you know, da, da, da, da, da. And
1:03:08 what did Hillary know? And when did she, did she actually throw, you know, a lamp at Bill’s head?
1:03:13 And, you know, it’s just like, these stories just had like, as they say, unbelievable legs. Um, and
1:03:17 then, you know, people started to talk in those days, you know, those are kind of the two big mega
1:03:21 stories where you started to hear this concept of like, basically, you know, there’d almost be seasons
1:03:26 to the drama, right? So, you know, season one of Clinton Lewinsky was the affair. Season two was,
1:03:31 you know, it becoming public. Season three was the congressional investigations, you know, whatever.
1:03:35 Season four was the, uh, you know, the star report, which is a whole nother, you know, the sort of
1:03:41 report that came out that was super salacious. Um, and so, um, and same thing with OJ, cause you know,
1:03:45 you have the trial, um, you know, the, you know, the entire thing. Um, and then, you know, OJ,
1:03:49 you know, he, he got off and then there was a second trial, um, with the, uh, civil trial that
1:03:53 he was convicted. And then there was the third trial for the, you know, his, his, uh, when he
1:03:59 held up a bunch of, a bunch of guys in, um, in, uh, in Las Vegas, uh, who were selling his memorabilia.
1:04:05 And then he actually, you know, went to prison for that. Um, and you know, was he, was he unfairly
1:04:09 convicted for that because, you know, it was revenge for, for this and that. Anyway, so like,
1:04:13 these were just like mega, mega stories. And so, um, Gabler sort of lays out this kind of theory,
1:04:16 very consistent with a lot of what we’ve been talking about. And in particular,
1:04:20 talking about this new media environment of cable, cable and AM radio and so forth. And
1:04:24 the early internet, um, it was like early internet, like, you know, there were internet news groups
1:04:27 that were, you know, super active and a lot of people like the star report is actually a good
1:04:31 example. One of the first PDFs that a lot of people downloaded and read was the star report,
1:04:36 which was the report on the Clinton Lewinsky affair by the independent council at that time. Um,
1:04:39 and so, um, I remember like millions of people downloaded their first PDF to be able to read that
1:04:43 report and find out what happened. So, so anyway, so he writes this book and basically what he
1:04:47 says in the book is basically what he says is, uh, life, the movies, he says, basically nonfiction
1:04:54 beats fiction. Um, he said in a, in a truly like open, decentralized, fully competitive, uh, media
1:04:59 environment, like the one that we, um, we’re talking about and we, we now live in. Um, he’s
1:05:05 like, basically essentially it was like, imagine how, how, imagine how stressful it is to be like a,
1:05:09 a fiction writer, like a novelist or a screenwriter right now. Like you’re trying desperately to come
1:05:14 up with enough interesting things to put into a two hour movie or a 300 page novel. Um, and then
1:05:18 in real life, you’ve got these stories that are like not just a single event, but like literally
1:05:23 like play out over many, many years with like unbelievable twists and turns. And it’s like all
1:05:29 real. Um, right. And basically, basically reality, basically reality is much stranger and more
1:05:33 bizarre than fiction. Uh, right. Right. Cause you think about it’s like fiction is where we make
1:05:36 things up. And then reality is like relatively boring in comparison. It’s like, no, no, no.
1:05:41 Reality is actually more interesting. Reality is stranger and more wild and it’s right. It’s
1:05:44 inherently unpredictable. And by the way, the stakes are higher cause like real people’s lives
1:05:49 are at stake and more unbelievable. Yeah. More unbelievable. Like, yeah, exactly. So, I mean,
1:05:51 you know, I’ll just give you an example. There’s an allegation, there’s an allegation. I don’t know
1:05:56 if it’s true, but there was an allegation that came out, uh, during the, uh, during the Clinton
1:06:01 Lewinsky thing, which is, uh, cause, um, you know, uh, Bill had lied to Hillary and everybody
1:06:05 else about the affair. And then the truth came out and Hillary got super mad. And so like,
1:06:08 there’s this story and I don’t know if this is true, but there’s a story that like Hillary didn’t
1:06:12 talk to Bill for like nine months or something. And then she finally basically talked to him and
1:06:16 then he bought, that was, and then the day after was the day he bombed. Ben, you remember he bombed,
1:06:21 what was it? Kosovo? Yeah. Kosovo. Yeah. And blew up the, I think it turned out to be like a
1:06:24 pharmaceutical plant or something like that. And, and, and so then there was this allegation that
1:06:28 basically Hillary, you know, what did Hillary do? Did she tell him that she’d only make up with him
1:06:33 if he like bombed Kosovo? Like, so like, you know, like I said, I don’t know if it’s true,
1:06:38 but like that, that’s such an inherently more interesting, like actual lives, wars, you know,
1:06:42 politics, presidential impeachments, people going to prison, like the stakes are just so much higher.
1:06:47 And so what, what Gabler basically said is fiction is effectively dead, um, uh, in terms of its cultural
1:06:51 relevance, basically not reality is going to dominate everything. And for basically for the rest of time,
1:06:58 we’re going to basically be living in effectively real life reality, omni-media reality television
1:07:03 shows encompassing kind of every aspect of our life. And, and, and, and, and that, you know,
1:07:07 and that basically that’s going to be our universe, which, you know, I would say if, I don’t know what
1:07:11 his opinion is of what’s happening right now, but I would say events since then have certainly for me
1:07:16 validated. It’s certainly gone in that direction. Yeah. Well, there, there’s this term that the term of
1:07:19 art now is, uh, the, uh, the, you know, there’s this thing that Marvel cinematic universe,
1:07:23 the MCU, which is like this whole world of all the Marvel movies and TV shows. And so,
1:07:27 and then there’s this theory that there’s like the Trump cinematic universe. Right. And then there’s
1:07:30 the, you know, there’s the democratic, you know, cinema is the, you know, the resistance cinematic
1:07:36 universe. Uh, and then there’s the COVID cinematic universe and there’s the, right. And so any of these
1:07:41 real life things that are happening, if you want to, you can enmesh yourself in them 24 seven.
1:07:47 Right. And, and this, this new media landscape will just like feed you infinite content, um, on,
1:07:51 on, on, on whatever these things are. And, and, and that does seem to be, uh, that does seem to
1:07:56 describe our times pretty accurately. Well, one, one quote, um, we talked about offline is the Dana
1:08:02 White. If the media hates it, you you’ve really got something. And I want to juxtapose that.
1:08:05 Yeah. He was referring to UFC. Yeah.
1:08:08 Yeah. But I want to go for it. Maybe you could describe, yeah, maybe you could describe if you
1:08:11 want to maybe describe the history of UFC in the media and how they dealt with it.
1:08:19 Yeah. Yeah. So, well, you know, when he started, um, and he acquired UFC, so it was started before him,
1:08:28 but he couldn’t get it on anything. Like there’s certainly not central media, um, not on cable TV,
1:08:37 done anything. And then I think he finally got it on Spike TV, uh, and Spike TV, um, I believe like
1:08:47 charged him to put it on Spike TV, if I recall correctly. Uh, so, you know, just basically no air
1:08:51 time at all. Like this is, you know, nobody’s going to like this. It’s crazy. It’s stupid.
1:08:58 Da da da da. Um, and, um, you know, and certainly no coverage, no, no media coverage, no sports
1:09:05 pages covered it, nothing like that. Uh, and you know, they, they built it up. Um, you know,
1:09:10 they, they paid to be on Spike TV. They kind of built up an audience slowly and all of a sudden,
1:09:16 you know, now it’s, uh, completely mainstream. Um, and I think, oh, maybe he was actually, uh,
1:09:22 referring to slap fights, which of course the media also hates. Uh, and I think it’s
1:09:27 just an internet phenomenon at this point, but a huge one. Yeah. So when you, when you listen to
1:09:31 his story, the way it played out is basically for the first several years of UFC, like it was just
1:09:35 like pushing this rock up a hill, as Ben said, where you couldn’t get coverage, you couldn’t get
1:09:39 anything, you couldn’t get distribution. Traditional media hated it. Um, and by the way, so, you know,
1:09:43 politicians and, you know, authority figures of all kinds. Um, and you know, that was a huge issue
1:09:47 in the early years. Um, right. And in contrast to other sports that would be on TV or have,
1:09:51 you know, have these big contracts or advertising deals or whatever. Um, but then this, this inversion
1:09:54 happened. And again, it’s sort of consistent with the, the, the sort of change in the media
1:09:58 landscape we’ve been talking about, um, where all of a sudden the media’s opposition became a selling
1:10:03 point. Right. Um, where the, the fact that the media hated it itself made it more enticing.
1:10:07 Right. So if, if the, it’s, you know, kind of rebellion, like if, if the authority figures
1:10:10 love it, you know, there must be something wrong with it. If the authority figures hate it,
1:10:15 uh, it must be really cool. Um, and so it really, um, it really started to invert at some
1:10:19 point in the 2000s and the sort of media hate started to work for him. And then, uh, the other
1:10:23 thing he says is, you know, he said they, they were the, they were the early adopter of social
1:10:27 media in sports. Like the minute he saw social media, he knew this was the future of everything
1:10:30 because it’s the thing that would route around these, you know, basically these, these, uh,
1:10:33 you know, these, these, these, these highly biased authority figures and, and let people
1:10:37 actually talk about the thing that they loved. By the way, the same thing happened with
1:10:41 the NBA, um, which is a kind of little known story. I got this whole story, uh, David Stern
1:10:46 before he passed away, told me the whole story, but the NBA, so the NBA was the first league
1:10:54 to kind of, well, it was the first league to like really integrate. Um, and so kind of in
1:10:59 the seventies, the teams became basically every team was almost all black players from the, you
1:11:06 know, no black players in the sixties. Uh, and the audience and the meat, the media turned
1:11:10 on them vicious, uh, and just said, it’s a drug league. Everybody’s talking cocaine, da, da,
1:11:17 da, da, um, to the point where media completely dropped the league. So famously that the magic
1:11:23 Johnson, um, finals where he scored 42 points playing center as a rookie wasn’t televised
1:11:29 live. It was on tape delay. Um, and so the way the NBA got around this was very similar to
1:11:34 the UFC is they got a contract with USA TV, uh, and they started getting the games on USA TV.
1:11:39 And then, uh, you know, all of a sudden they had the magic bird thing and, and that built
1:11:42 momentum. And then Michael Jordan came into the league and then that, you know, now it’s a huge
1:11:49 thing, but the media had like completely turned against the league to the point where they shut
1:11:55 them out of live broadcast, even for the NBA finals. And then the kind of entire thing
1:11:59 came back using kind of alternative media and going right to the people and that kind of thing.
1:12:05 So, and I think that, you know, to Mark’s point that probably enhanced it, that as an NBA fan,
1:12:11 you had to watch it on USA, you had to get cable and watch the USA TV station, um, which made you a
1:12:17 much more loyal fan in the way that the UFC fans are like massively loyal, uh, in an incredible way.
1:12:24 What’s fascinating about the NBA is it, as it, um, as well, um, as, as we’re talking about these
1:12:30 topics is it, it also sort of has demonstrated some of these trends where, you know, viewership in
1:12:34 the game is, is down, but people are obsessed with sort of the media around the game. Uh, people are
1:12:35 obsessed with the drama.
1:12:40 It’s all, yes, yes, yeah. Yeah. But there’s a few reasons for that one, but yeah, but that’s a,
1:12:49 that’s another one where, uh, the, it, it’s a move, uh, to social media off of. Yeah. Off of
1:12:54 kind of television media. Yeah. People called this past election, the podcast election, or, you know,
1:13:00 many people are noting sort of the influence of people like, like Rogan and, and others, um, you
1:13:05 know, Democrats are asking, why don’t we have our own Joe Rogan? You know, uh, Trump has been the,
1:13:09 the best politician of recent, of course, Obama was great in 2008, but Trump recently at using
1:13:15 these new channels and you talk to people on both sides of the aisle. Um, and, and, and when you
1:13:20 talk to your dumb friends, they’re, they’re saying, Hey, where’s our Joe Rogan or what’s our new media
1:13:26 strategy? How do you make sense of what’s, what’s happening there? Well, the, the, the Democrats had
1:13:32 Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. Yeah. So that, that, that was just an oops on their part, I think.
1:13:38 So, um, so let’s talk, talk structure and then, and then, and then come back to the specifics. So the,
1:13:43 the structural observation I would make is, um, is, is, is, so there’s this concept we talk a lot
1:13:47 in business, we call the barbell, um, or we call death, death of the middle, which is you, you, as,
1:13:52 as sort of, as, as industries mature, um, you tend to, you tend to start with things that are kind of
1:13:55 of a certain level of scale, a certain level of complexity, depth, price, whatever. And then you,
1:13:59 markets tend to polarize and then you tend to get this barbell effect where the things in the middle
1:14:03 start to die. And then you basically have the rise of the edges. Um, and so the classic example of this
1:14:08 is, uh, retail shopping. Um, you used to have general stores and then department stores that
1:14:12 had a pretty good selection of pretty good, pretty good things at pretty good prices. Um, and then over
1:14:16 the course of the last 30 years, you know, all of those kind of general purpose stores, department
1:14:21 stores have gotten wrecked and replaced by barbell on the barbell that you got Walmart and Amazon on the
1:14:26 one side of the, of the barbell, which was just massive selection that no department store can match
1:14:31 at lower prices, um, at higher scale. And then you’ve got the, the, the boutiques, you’ve got the
1:14:34 Gucci store and the Apple store on the other side, you know, selling something very specific and unique,
1:14:40 um, often at much higher prices. Um, and so one, one of our observations for a long time has been
1:14:44 that, that, that, you know, that tends to happen in many, many different industries. Um, uh, you know,
1:14:48 it’s happened in banks, it’s happened in, in, in ad agencies, many other media companies, many other,
1:14:52 many other industries. Um, it, it turns out, I think that’s what’s happening in media formats
1:15:00 right now. So the, um, the standard like television show is either, I think, 23 minutes, uh, with seven
1:15:05 minutes for commercials or like 43 minutes with like 17 minutes for commercials. Um, and then,
1:15:08 you know, if you watch cable news or whatever, you know, they’re, they’re, they, they, you know,
1:15:12 they have 43 minutes of content, let’s say in the hour, but then they break it up because of the
1:15:15 commercial breaks. They, they break it up where they, you know, they cut to commercial every five
1:15:20 minutes or something. And so any given interview can only be, you know, whatever, three or four minutes
1:15:24 long, if it’s live, um, or, or they have to go across, you know, multiple, multiple, multiple
1:15:28 segments. But, you know, it’s sort of the, the, you know, the cliche is you’re watching an interview
1:15:31 with somebody on, on cable news and it just starts to get interesting. And then the host says, well,
1:15:33 we’ll have to leave it there. You know, thank you for coming in. And it’s like, well, wait a minute.
1:15:38 It’s actually a technique, by the way, you know, like as soon as somebody says something
1:15:41 interesting, you’re like, well, yeah, gotta go.
1:15:44 Throw the commercial. And so, and it’s like, you know, why do you have to leave it there? You’ve got
1:15:48 the person in the studio, you could go for another hour, you could go for another three hours. Um,
1:15:52 but you know, you, you, you choose not to. Um, and, and even the long form, even, you know, 60
1:15:56 minutes, you know, which is the 43 minute version. It’s by the way, it’s not 60 minutes. It’s 43
1:16:00 minutes because of the commercials. But, but even there, it’s like a long form interview is like 20
1:16:04 minutes long. Right. Um, like that’s, that’s a huge, like for in the old media environment, if you got a
1:16:09 20 minute interview on the air on Sunday night, that was like a very, very big deal. Um, the cliche of
1:16:14 our time is that attention spans are collapsing. And this is the rise of, of social media and TikTok,
1:16:19 um, and short form video. And so the, the cliche is, you know, and you, you hear this constantly
1:16:24 is, you know, kids only want to watch two minute videos and the whole thing. Well, so it turns out,
1:16:27 I think it’s actually, no, it’s actually the barbell. Kids want to watch either two minute videos or
1:16:33 three hour Rogan episodes, right? It’s the barbell, right? And, and, and, and what is, and what is the
1:16:38 three hour Rogan episode or Lex Friedman episode have going for it? It, you know, it doesn’t have that
1:16:40 thing where, Oh, we’re, you know, just when it starts to get interesting, we’re going to leave it there.
1:16:46 You can actually fully articulate a point of view on any topic. Um, you know, and, you know,
1:16:50 part of this is the no gatekeepers thing. And so the range of topics has expanded a lot, but part of
1:16:54 it is you can actually talk for a long time. Um, and you can go on, you know, you can go on YouTube
1:16:58 and you can watch, you know, in some cases now, you know, in some cases now these are running six,
1:17:02 seven, eight hours long, right. Of, of people talking. I did Lex Friedman earlier this year.
1:17:06 I think it was three and a half hours. Um, and so it’s just this, you know, and with three and a half
1:17:10 hours, I mean, first of all, it’s all on demand and, you know, they segment the videos. And so you
1:17:14 can decide which parts of it you want to watch. But however, um, you know, if you’re an interesting
1:17:18 person, I have interesting things to say, you can like actually fully, fully articulate and explore
1:17:23 a topic. And I, and I think what, what basically that format, um, has, has uncovered is there’s
1:17:28 actually tremendous hunger, um, in the country and in the world for actual long form intelligent
1:17:33 commentary. Um, I, I should note that, you know, Charlie Rose was the, was the sort of, you know,
1:17:37 I think kind of test case for this. Um, and, um, you know, he’s, you know, been a friend
1:17:40 of mine for a long time and I was on, on the show multiple times and, you know, he got,
1:17:47 you know, he got, he got, he got, he got, uh, you know, he, he was, he toed as they say,
1:17:51 but you know, like he did this for a long time. Um, and you know, but he did this, but you know,
1:17:54 and his story is an hour long show, but he would let me, I think it was on public TV for a long
1:17:58 time and he would let people go for 50 minutes or something. Um, and so he proved it. And for some
1:18:03 reason, people didn’t pick up the hint until the podcasters came along. Um, cause there’s
1:18:05 nothing else like that. Like after Charlie Rose, there was nothing else like that until the
1:18:10 podcasters and then the podcasters picked it up and ran with it. Um, and so anyway, like I find
1:18:15 this to be like extremely encouraging. Like I think it just, it turns out that there are a large number
1:18:21 of people who have actually been starving, uh, for real discussion, uh, and real content. Um, I think
1:18:24 there’s a corollary to this, which is, I think the, I think the jury’s in now. I think you can make the
1:18:28 claim television makes you dumb in a, in a really fundamental way. Cause like literally it cuts
1:18:32 off all the interesting conversations, right. As they’re about to get, get interesting. It kind of,
1:18:35 it kind of has to be intellectually impoverishing as a consequence of
1:18:39 the structure of the business and of the format. Uh, but the podcasts don’t have that problem.
1:18:42 And again, look, it’s not that the podcasts are going to be perfect and it’s not like there’s
1:18:46 not going to be people on the podcast. We’re going to say crazy things or whatever. Um, but if you’re
1:18:50 interested in a topic, you can go online now and the world’s experts can explain it to you in
1:18:54 enormous detail. And it turns out the audience for that is very large. Oh, and then the other thing
1:18:58 is, you know, YouTube gives these guys, um, you know, data on completion rates and it, it like
1:19:02 the completion rates on, on these long form podcasts, it’s much higher than people, you know,
1:19:08 than people might expect. Um, and so, um, like it’s incredibly exciting that, that, that this,
1:19:12 this is a conceivable thing. And then, you know, maybe, maybe we might touch on like if, if this
1:19:17 holds, and as you said, like, you know, it is pretty clear 2024, the podcast thing was a very big deal
1:19:21 for Trump. And then it was a very big, you know, the books are coming out now on the 2024 campaign
1:19:25 and it’s becoming clearer and clearer. Like all the Kamala people now greatly regret that they didn’t put
1:19:30 her on, on more long form podcasts. Um, but you know, the other question is, is this, is this going
1:19:36 to change the skillset and aptitude, um, and ability, you know, is this going to change the
1:19:41 threshold for what it now is going to mean to run for office or to be an authority figure? Like it is,
1:19:44 you know, it is the new threshold that you have to be able to go on a long form podcast and talk for
1:19:49 three hours and be interesting. Um, because I can tell you like, to Ben’s point, traditional media
1:19:53 training does not teach you how to do that. And then a large number of people who have been in charge
1:19:57 of things for the last 50 years are definitely not able to do that. Um, and a lot of, you know,
1:20:01 a lot of, let’s say incumbent, uh, authority figures today are not able to do that. And so
1:20:04 is, is that going to be the new threshold for success in the public arena? I think is an interesting
1:20:10 question. Yeah. The, the other thing that’s on podcasts, which is, I think the thing that is
1:20:15 causing the Democrats fit right, fits right now in terms of how to counter the strategy is, um,
1:20:21 it’s a reversion to the old form of journalism that I mentioned at the very beginning of this
1:20:29 podcast, which is these podcasters are not trained journalists. They’re not trained experts. They,
1:20:35 they’re not highly schooled. They’re comedians, um, and you know, sports guys. And, you know,
1:20:42 so if you look at anyone from Charlemagne the God to Joe Rogan, to, uh, Theo Vaughn, like the big,
1:20:48 big podcasters are regular people who aren’t coming in with strong partisan points of view,
1:20:55 they’re coming in wanting to learn. Um, and so as a result, like they are actually open
1:21:04 to arguments on both sides, which is, um, the thing that they’ve a little bit outlawed in the kind of
1:21:09 traditional democratic media, which is you can’t be, you can’t platform that person. You can’t,
1:21:16 there, there was a huge rage at Bill Maher for meeting with president Trump. Um, so that whole
1:21:24 idea that, okay, we’re going to have a Democrat, a democratic podcaster is antithetical to podcasting,
1:21:29 which is no, we’re going to have a regular guy who just asks questions and wants to learn things is
1:21:37 what people want to see. Because I want somebody like me asking this guy who’s, uh, you know,
1:21:43 an expert or running for office, some questions, what I would ask. And that’s, I think that’s the
1:21:49 adjustment they’re going to have to make is like, okay, now this is going to be a real conversation,
1:21:57 which means it’s not going to be, uh, a priori partisan, which is a very new world. Um, and like,
1:22:05 when you watch like CNN or Fox or whatever, the host is always asking a gotcha partisan question.
1:22:13 Always. Um, you watch Joe Rogan or like the Brexit club, they’re not really like that. They’re
1:22:17 actually wanting to know the answer to the question. Yeah. As, as somebody who’s been on the receiving
1:22:21 end of both of those, it’s extremely, the first time if you’ve been, if you’re just dealing with
1:22:25 traditional press, you just like every single question is that attempt to blow you up and to
1:22:29 catch you in a like contradiction or to somehow get you to say something that’s going to wreck
1:22:34 your career, get you fired. Um, and you, which is why you need the media training, right? You don’t
1:22:38 need any media training to go on a podcast. Right. Right. You need the anti, you need the anti-media
1:22:41 training. Um, you know, the other thing, and maybe this is obvious now, but, um, you know,
1:22:45 the other thing is the three hour podcast doesn’t work if it’s everything it, you know, if you have
1:22:48 to stop every five seconds because some, you know, you have to accuse somebody of saying something
1:22:54 racist, right? Like, so this, this like, you know, or sexist or whatever, the, the, the, this, this,
1:22:58 this speech suppression thing, you know, that then this, this, this sort of puritanism that,
1:23:02 that sort of kicked in in a large part of American public life over the last 10 years with people
1:23:06 getting blown up for saying one thing wrong, like that just doesn’t, that just like kills your
1:23:10 ability. It kills your ability to have discussion. Um, which is of course what, what the intention of,
1:23:14 of, of, of it is. Um, and it certainly kills your ability to have a, uh, have a podcast. Um,
1:23:19 and so if, if there’s like the, you know, if, if you are in a, let’s say if you’re in a culture,
1:23:24 if you’re in a political culture that wants to censor and cancel people, like the format can’t work.
1:23:29 Like, I, I, I don’t know how you make it work. It’s just, it’s just like far too dangerous. Um,
1:23:35 and so it, it, it, it, it, like aspirationally what you could say is this could drive the Democrats
1:23:39 and the left back, you know, more of the direction of free speech and away from cancellation, but we’ll see
1:23:42 if they, uh, you know, we’ll see if they actually. Well, I think in order for this strategy to be
1:23:48 in fact, by the way, Gavin Newsom has, um, done a pretty good job of that. I mean,
1:23:53 you can argue to do whatever you want about Gavin Newsom and his, uh, evolving views. Um,
1:24:01 but his podcast is kind of in the correct direction. Now, of course, a lot of people in the Democratic
1:24:05 Party are furious at him for having Steve Bannon on, for having Charlie Kirk on and so forth.
1:24:11 But, and then, and then being kind of regular with them, just having a conversation, but that,
1:24:12 that is the right idea.
1:24:17 Well, it’s the right idea for a conversation and communication and getting, you know, involving,
1:24:21 you know, the Democrats towards a more, more back towards more open freedom of speech, more
1:24:25 interesting full conversations. We, we, we, we, we do have to see whether it’s going to work for him
1:24:26 electorally.
1:24:30 Yeah. That’s, that’s a different question, but I think at the podcast, if he wasn’t running,
1:24:37 if he was just a podcaster, I think his podcast would be pretty popular. I mean, I think it is
1:24:38 like fairly popular.
1:24:40 he’s probably the only politician right now with a true podcast.
1:24:41 Yeah.
1:24:43 That I know. Sure. Yeah.
1:24:44 Yeah.
1:24:49 Now, if he, if he, if he comes in 20th in the, uh, in the, in the, in the, in the 2027 primaries,
1:24:52 I will, um, uh, we can talk.
1:24:59 It’s a tricky thing given he’s running for office. I agree. I agree. Like it’s, you kind of want to be
1:25:00 on the other side, but yes.
1:25:04 Yeah. Do they really want, does his, does his, does his base really want him to do this? So yeah,
1:25:04 we’ll see. We’ll see.
1:25:10 Right. Kamala going on call her daddy didn’t achieve the same, you know, impact as, uh, Trump
1:25:13 and JD Vance going on, you know, Rogan and Theo Vala.
1:25:21 Well, yeah. And that was kind of like a weird choice because like, that’s a, you know, Joe Rogan
1:25:28 and, uh, you know, even like, you know, a lot of these podcasts, the breakfast club or, or Bill
1:25:34 Maher or whatever, like they talk about politics. She was probably the first politician ever
1:25:41 on call, you know, call her daddy. Like, like, it’s just, it was just a weird choice in that
1:25:46 way. Everybody’s like, why would a candidate go on that? That is a podcast, but it’s not
1:25:52 a podcast about this. Like that audience doesn’t care about this. That audience is into some
1:25:52 whole nother.
1:25:57 Well, and one of the great mysteries, one of the great mysteries, you know, and again, this
1:26:01 is coming out in the campaign books. Um, um, just, uh, this book, a fight that came out
1:26:05 with, uh, two, two top reporters, uh, last week, um, talks about this at great length and
1:26:09 one of the great mysteries of, of 2024 that will last forever. We’ll never know the answer
1:26:14 two is like, if, if Kamala had gone on Rogan and sat there for three hours, like would
1:26:17 it have, would it, and, and, you know, Rogan makes, Rogan makes almost all of his guests
1:26:19 look good, right? Like almost everybody comes out.
1:26:22 He’s very, very friendly, regardless of your point of view.
1:26:27 Right. But like, you know, would, would she, you know, would she, how, how, how well would
1:26:31 that have gone? Um, and you know, people have different theories on that and it’s one of
1:26:33 those, I think it’s going to be one of those great mysteries because we’ll never know.
1:26:39 Yeah. I think, look, I think the, one of the challenges with that whole campaign is,
1:26:47 you know, to this day, um, who knows what Kamala thought on so many issues. Um, you know,
1:26:51 just cause it, it never came out. Like there were the talking points. There was the, it was
1:26:59 very, very structured. Um, but you know, what was her real economic policy? What was her real
1:27:05 tech policy? What was her real foreign policy? Um, you know, it never felt like we got great
1:27:11 depth on that, uh, even in the debate, even, you know, in any of the formats. Um, whereas
1:27:18 you kind of knew exactly Trump’s positions by the end of the podcasts. And so would that have
1:27:24 helped her hurt? And if it would have helped, you know, I would say the people advising her
1:27:29 and her campaign did her a great disservice because, you know, we didn’t know what they,
1:27:34 we just didn’t know what that was. Like, I don’t know what it was, you know, at all. I paid very
1:27:40 close attention. Yeah. It’s fascinating. We’re sort of talking around it, but you know, when,
1:27:46 when your party is out of power, you have to learn sort of, uh, sort of the skills of subversion,
1:27:51 right. And, and, and comedy and, and sort of contrarian thinking, these, these are,
1:27:56 these are tools of, of, uh, of subversion or tools that you can afford that help you when you’re,
1:28:01 when you’re not in power, when you are in power, you know, asking too many questions, uh, comedy,
1:28:06 you know, that might not help you. Right. And, and it’s funny because when I was in college,
1:28:10 Democrats, um, when, when, when sort of Bush was in power, they had mastered the tools of subversion,
1:28:14 right. You know, Jon Stewart, uh, Steve Colbert, Dave Chappelle, they had the,
1:28:21 the comedians, they had the sort of contrarian intellectuals. And, and now that Democrats are
1:28:27 out of power and Republicans are in power, both the right has to learn how to sort of evolve from
1:28:32 the underdog who’s always questioning to the, to the establishment to, can you actually get things done,
1:28:38 um, and, and, and move the needle. And, and the left has to learn a little bit of, of some of these,
1:28:41 uh, these tactics that, that the right used when they were out of power.
1:28:47 I think that’s right. Although there is like this subtlety to it where there’s, you know,
1:28:52 there’s power in the white house and then there’s power in Congress and then there’s power in the press
1:29:01 and power in academia, um, and the other institutions. And so while the white house and Congress have moved
1:29:09 to, um, you know, right-wing power, the other institutions are still left-wing power. A lot of
1:29:14 the ones that kind of in the media, uh, and, you know, kind of the mainstream media. So,
1:29:24 you know, and I think that the Democrats like are to be fair to them are, are stuck a little bit in
1:29:30 between that because they’re protecting certain parts of the establishment and then against other
1:29:34 parts of the establishment. And that’s put them in. And I think they need to choose, right? Like,
1:29:38 uh, you know, like if I was running the democratic party, I would say, okay, look, we either have to,
1:29:47 we got to go full rebel and like, then we can’t be like, we, we actually have to be against CNN as well
1:29:52 as Fox news and all this shit and the New York times and the wall street journal and every single one of
1:29:56 them. And we got to be like, against the expert class, if we’re really going to be the rebels,
1:30:03 uh, because that’s what it takes to be a rebel. And that, that’s where they’re getting kind of
1:30:11 squeezed between kind of two ideas. Yeah. So let’s, um, we, we’ve been talking at a,
1:30:16 at a structural level, at a theoretical level. Why don’t we make this a little bit, uh, practical,
1:30:20 a little bit applied. Um, Mark, what would you say to that? Well, let’s, let’s start with Ben,
1:30:24 because Ben, Ben coaches our CEO. So I’m, I’m, I’m a true radical on, on, on this topic. So
1:30:30 let’s, let’s start with. Yeah. I think you, you’re a little more kind of further than I would be,
1:30:36 but look, we’re, we’re bigger and different than, than our companies are. So like, I think as a startup,
1:30:41 it’s going to be, so it used to be like, you know, when we started the firm, not that long ago,
1:30:49 you could tell your story to the biggest possible audience kind of through the media that, that was
1:30:54 like the tried true technique. And, you know, you would explain to them what you were doing and if
1:31:01 it was interesting to the world and they would tell it and so forth. Um, that’s become both difficult
1:31:08 and suboptimal. So difficult in that, uh, you know, it’s very possible that you go and say,
1:31:13 hey, we’ve got this interesting new product. And the story has come out that of all the possible
1:31:18 things that could go wrong with it, as opposed to, you know, the things that it could do. And it
1:31:23 doesn’t matter. It could be like a cure for cancer and the articles might be, they’re going to overpopulate
1:31:27 the earth by like having people live to it. By the way, this isn’t a made up thing.
1:31:33 These are actual stories that have come out. Um, so, so you have to be very, uh, so, so that’s a
1:31:41 difficult thing. Um, and then the other thing is like, it’s not going to be as clear as your story
1:31:48 coming from you. And because you can now tell your story from you, um, that ends up being much more
1:31:56 effective. So having a real direct content media strategy and capability and so forth, um, which is,
1:32:03 by the way, uh, not coincidentally, um, why we were so excited about having you join Eric is, you know,
1:32:11 you really need that capability if you’re gonna, you know, kind of reach the world with your message or
1:32:17 with your products and so forth. So that, you know, kind of went to being, um, a nothing to a nice to
1:32:22 have to like, it really has to be your core strategy for telling what you’re doing now.
1:32:30 Um, it just, look, as you grow, you end up showing up in the media, whether you like it or not. Uh,
1:32:36 and I think that it’s still, you know, and still a lot of people read it and still like, if you’re,
1:32:44 you know, if you’re building a product and your competitor, you know, puts a story in the press about
1:32:50 you who that’s, you know, bad or not true or whatever, that’s going to have a big effect,
1:32:55 you know, uh, on your customers, particularly if you’re an enterprise company, they’ll take that New
1:33:00 York Times article to every single one of, uh, your prospects and say, these guys are bad guys or
1:33:09 whatever. So you still need like a strategy for dealing, I think, with the press that deals with
1:33:13 that kind of thing, or you’re just very vulnerable and you can tell your story directly. Um,
1:33:18 but you know, then it depends, like if you’ve got a big enough megaphone, right?
1:33:23 I think Elon Musk doesn’t need to, he’s got the biggest megaphone, you know, and then he acquired
1:33:30 X, doesn’t need that part of the strategy. But like, if, if you’ve got like a somewhat big megaphone,
1:33:35 um, and you know, you have a certain number of followers and this and that and the other, then,
1:33:42 then I think you have to have a balanced approach or like have both approaches in order to keep yourself
1:33:48 out of the trouble. But I would never, like, I think there’s no reason to like tell your primary story through the press.
1:33:49 I think that’s very dangerous.
1:33:55 There’s always the question, you know, for founders of, hey, Elon is the best sort of entrepreneur in the world.
1:34:01 Where, where can I copy him? Or you sort of emulate what he’s done versus where is it? Uh,
1:34:05 don’t try this at home. Uh, you know, that’s, that’s, you know, Elon can get away with it, but, uh, you know, we can’t.
1:34:11 We’re sure. Yeah. Like he is, he’s, he’s, he’s special. He’s got very special capabilities.
1:34:17 And then look, he’s, you know, anytime, by, by the way, politics, um, would be the number one thing I
1:34:26 would say, don’t try it at home. Uh, in that, uh, it’s so, it’s almost always, you know, and I’m saying
1:34:33 this as a kind of firm that’s gotten very involved in politics. Um, but it was, unless it’s necessary, uh,
1:34:40 it’s, it’s very tough. Like that, that’s a very tough thing to meant to manage from like, uh,
1:34:45 okay, I’m evangelizing a new company and trying to get people to understand my products and what I’m
1:34:53 doing. And then, um, you’re, you’re in politics that, that one takes a very high, you know, probably
1:34:59 a higher degree of skill than I think I have right now. Um, in terms of like getting that right is,
1:35:06 is complex. Now it can be like, it can be a boost. It’s been, I think effective for, uh, Alex carpet,
1:35:11 Palantir. He’s done a tremendous job on it. Um, I still don’t really know what he thinks. You know,
1:35:17 he says like 99% of things he says are like Republican. And then he says he’s a Democrat.
1:35:23 You know, so like, uh, he’s very clever in that way, but like he, he’s, he’s definitely pulling it off.
1:35:28 And yeah, anything you would say is, is really, or we’d all say is sort of invest in the go direct,
1:35:36 um, capabilities, uh, you know, founders who have great sort of, um, you know, reputations,
1:35:43 public presences are able to, to, to recruit better, are able to have lower customer acquisition costs,
1:35:47 are able to have cheaper cost of capital because they can raise better. And people often,
1:35:53 you know, don’t invest enough in high quality talent, uh, or in their own capabilities to,
1:35:59 um, sort of get their, get their message out there or, or their, their company’s message.
1:36:03 Yeah. So this is a good, so there’s a good subtle point in this that you’re mentioning and Mark alluded
1:36:08 to earlier, which is like, people don’t trust companies. And you’d like, like the, you know,
1:36:13 the company, nobody like follows, like very few people follow the a 16 Z Twitter handle compared
1:36:19 to like, or the X handle versus who follows Mark or who follows Chris Dixon or who follows you or who
1:36:27 follows me. Um, so, so the person, particularly the person running the company is very, very important
1:36:31 that you let people know who you are. And one of the things, you know, early on in the firm that,
1:36:36 that worked extremely well for us was just like blogging. And this was the era of blogging. Um,
1:36:41 because then, you know, people knew what they were joining. They knew who they were taking money from
1:36:48 that kind of thing was actually in many ways, much more effective than anything we could do through
1:36:56 traditional media in that way. Um, and now that’s much more true. So being willing to articulate your
1:37:02 point of view, your things and so forth in an interesting way is, I think, essential now to a
1:37:07 marketing strategy. Yeah. People don’t, you know, want to hear from the Coinbase handle. They
1:37:11 want to hear from Brian Armstrong or people don’t, you know, open, not open AI. It’s, it’s Sam Altman.
1:37:15 And, and you guys were early to this calling your firm Andreessen Horowitz, uh, sort of the
1:37:18 identification of people with the company that that’s what people want to hear from.
1:37:18 No doubt.
1:37:24 Well, this has been a great discussion about the, uh, evolution of, uh, of media until next time.
1:37:25 Ben, Mark, thanks for coming on.
1:37:26 All right. Hey, thank you.
1:37:28 Great. Thanks, Eric. Thanks everyone.
1:37:35 Thanks for listening to the A16Z podcast. If you enjoyed the episode,
1:37:40 let us know by leaving a review at ratethispodcast.com/A16Z.
1:37:49 We’ve got more great conversations coming your way. See you next time.

0:00:11 If you are looking to have a good conversation with someone who wields great political power, when is the best time to have that conversation?
0:00:15 The most obvious answer is while they’re in office.
0:00:23 But when they’re in that vortex, they have strong incentives to not speak candidly or to just promote their agenda.
0:00:33 Another common time for a conversation like this is the exit interview, but the exit interview can get tied up with exhaustion or relief, regret.
0:00:38 Eventually, this person may publish their memoirs and they’ll do some interviews to promote the book.
0:00:45 But by then, they may be in factory production mode, churning out the same answers in every interview.
0:00:51 So when is the best time to have a good conversation with a person like this?
0:00:59 Is there maybe a sweet spot sometime after leaving office, but before publishing their memoirs?
0:01:08 Maybe while they’re still writing and spending all their waking hours sifting through their accomplishments and their what could have beens?
0:01:16 Let’s hope that is the sweet spot, because that’s when we caught Antony Blinken for the conversation you’re about to hear.
0:01:20 Blinken was secretary of state for the entirety of the Biden presidency.
0:01:24 He was considered one of Biden’s favorite and most trusted allies.
0:01:27 Their time together goes back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
0:01:32 Blinken has spent more than three decades working on U.S. foreign policy.
0:01:35 He also served in the Clinton and Obama administrations.
0:01:41 Secretary of state is sometimes described as the second most important job in the world.
0:01:47 Past office holders include Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, George C.
0:01:52 Marshall and Henry Kissinger, whom Blinken spoke with regularly while Blinken was secretary.
0:01:56 Here’s how Kissinger once described the secretary job.
0:02:01 Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
0:02:17 Today on Freakonomics Radio, we interrupt Antony Blinken’s memoir writing to talk about Blinken himself, as well as Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Gaza, China, Syria, Iran, Russia and the rest of the world.
0:02:37 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:02:49 So first of all, just say your name and what you do.
0:02:51 Tony Blinken and former secretary of state.
0:02:53 You shortened it quite a bit.
0:02:53 I did.
0:02:55 You could have gone on for hours.
0:02:57 Three presidential administrations, correct?
0:03:02 Three presidential administrations, starting with President Clinton through President Obama and then President Biden.
0:03:06 I’m sorry to be so basic here, but why Antony and not Anthony?
0:03:12 I was apparently supposed to be David, and then my cousin beat me to birth and was David.
0:03:16 My parents had a friend, a sculptor whose first name was Antony.
0:03:18 They liked the name, and there it was.
0:03:21 And ever since, I’ve had to deal with the fact that there’s no H in it.
0:03:26 So, while we’re at it, you have a pretty interesting family background.
0:03:27 Can you give me that?
0:03:41 What I really want to know is the degree to which your family background informed the way you think about the world, including the promises of the world, but also the perils.
0:03:51 I think so many of us are the product in no small measure of the conversations we have around our dining room tables, our kitchen tables, and the stories we hear from our families.
0:03:53 That’s very much me.
0:04:01 I had my father’s father, my grandfather, who came to the United States at the turn of the last century, fleeing pogroms in what is now Ukraine.
0:04:04 He was able to build a life in the United States.
0:04:08 He was welcomed here, built an extraordinary life, sent his three sons to Ivy League schools.
0:04:09 What did he do for a living?
0:04:10 He started out as a lawyer.
0:04:20 He even practiced before the Supreme Court, but ultimately he started a company and did very well with that, but was also just deeply engaged in the life of the mind, but also in the public square.
0:04:36 Back in the 1940s, as the question of Israel was emerging and the question of a Jewish state, one of the arguments against the United States supporting the Declaration of Independence by Israel was the notion that it wasn’t economically viable.
0:04:45 And at the time, my grandfather produced a study that was both definitive and considered somewhat dispositive of the question, showing that, in fact, it would be economically viable.
0:04:50 That contributed to the policy decision the government made at the time to recognize Israel.
0:04:58 For my grandfather, he saw, like so many others, this country as a beacon of hope and maybe the last best hope.
0:05:03 My late stepfather, Samuel Pizar, he was born in Bialystok, Poland.
0:05:06 Before the war, that was a center of Jewish life in Poland.
0:05:10 He went to school in Bialystok with about 900 other children.
0:05:14 He’s the only one of those 900 to have survived the war.
0:05:18 He lost his mother, his father, his little sister, Frida.
0:05:23 First, there was a ghetto in Bialystok when the country was dominated by the Soviets.
0:05:25 And then, of course, it gave way to the Nazis.
0:05:31 He was sent to work camps and then concentration camps, death camps, Majdanek, Dachau, Auschwitz.
0:05:32 Somehow survived.
0:05:37 At the very end of the war, he was on a death march out of one of the camps in Bavaria.
0:05:40 He made a break for it along with a couple of his friends.
0:05:42 And somehow they made it into the woods.
0:05:44 They hid out during the day.
0:05:45 They moved around at night.
0:05:50 And then one day, as they were hiding, they heard this deep rumbling sound.
0:05:54 And they looked out from where they were, and they saw something they’d never seen before.
0:05:58 A large tank, not with the Iron Cross, but with a five-pointed white star.
0:06:03 My stepfather ran to the tank, which is probably a pretty foolhardy thing to do.
0:06:04 He’s how old at this point?
0:06:06 He is at this point about 16.
0:06:09 He makes a run for the tank, and the hatch opens up.
0:06:13 And a large African-American GI looks down at him.
0:06:18 He then says the only three words in the English language that he knew.
0:06:20 His mother taught him these words before the war.
0:06:22 God bless America.
0:06:29 The GI lifts him up into the tank and, in effect, into freedom.
0:06:33 Again, America as literally the only hope.
0:06:35 That was infused in me.
0:06:41 And I wanted to do my small part, hopefully in continuing in some fashion, that tradition.
0:06:47 Your stepfather, many years later, talking about you working now in government, he said,
0:06:52 he took in what happened to me when I was his age, and I think it impressed him and it gave
0:06:53 him another dimension.
0:06:59 When he has to worry today about poison gas in Syria, this is during the Obama administration,
0:07:04 he almost inevitably thinks about the gas with which my entire family was eliminated.
0:07:06 Is that an accurate connection?
0:07:07 It is.
0:07:08 That’s right.
0:07:14 The resonance, the connections, the progression of history is something that resonates powerfully
0:07:14 with me.
0:07:17 It’s also personal because of these family stories.
0:07:22 And then, you know, Stephen, I had the extraordinary experience of living outside of my own country
0:07:22 as a young boy.
0:07:26 We moved to Paris from New York when I was nine years old.
0:07:28 My mother had remarried, and off we went to Paris.
0:07:33 That was also extraordinary because it gave me an opportunity to see my own country through
0:07:34 the eyes of others.
0:07:37 This was an incredibly charged time, the early 1970s.
0:07:38 The Cold War was on.
0:07:40 The Vietnam War was on.
0:07:42 We had conflicts in the Middle East, Afghanistan.
0:07:49 You wind up getting into discussions, debates, arguments with your classmates, and you find
0:07:54 yourself almost in the role of a junior diplomat because inevitably you’re kind of representing
0:07:54 your own country.
0:08:00 Given the climate of the times, especially having to do with the war in Gaza and many,
0:08:04 many events surrounding that, I’m guessing there are some people who say, oh, well, Tony
0:08:09 Blinken, now that I’ve heard the stories of the persecution his family faced because they
0:08:15 were Jewish, and now that I know he’s got Jewish roots and professes that that persecution
0:08:21 was kind of the root of his worldview about wanting to, let’s say, alleviate suffering, defend
0:08:22 people, and so on.
0:08:26 But I’m sure some people are thinking, well, the simple fact that he’s got Jewish roots
0:08:28 means that he’s in the bag for Israel.
0:08:34 That’s an unfortunately typical reduction that’s happening in our political conversations
0:08:34 these days.
0:08:36 So let’s say I were to say that to you.
0:08:40 Oh, well, you may defend your and the Biden administration’s record on Israel and many,
0:08:44 many other things, but persuade me that you’re not biased.
0:08:50 And what I’m really asking is how can you perform your abilities as a political figure, as a civil
0:08:56 servant, whatever it is, while incorporating the strength of your personal and family background
0:08:58 without biasing yourself against others?
0:08:58 Sure.
0:08:59 And look, I get that.
0:09:00 I understand that reaction.
0:09:01 I certainly heard it.
0:09:03 I guess I’d say two things, Stephen.
0:09:05 First, I’m in the bag for the United States.
0:09:10 I had the extraordinary privilege of representing our country for four years around the world as
0:09:18 Secretary of State, and first, foremost, my job was to do my best to try to represent the
0:09:21 interests of my country, my fellow citizens, as well as our values.
0:09:26 There are plenty of judgments to go around about whether I and we did that well and differently
0:09:27 or badly.
0:09:30 That’s for others to make, but that’s what my job was, and that’s what I try to do every
0:09:30 day.
0:09:38 Second, it’s precisely because of this extraordinary form of experience of our family stories and
0:09:45 the suffering that my own immediate relatives had gone through that I think and I hope made
0:09:51 me deeply sensitive to the suffering of anyone, Jewish or Palestinian, of whatever nationality,
0:09:54 of whatever background, of whatever faith.
0:10:03 I think it wouldn’t do justice to my own history and that legacy to not be deeply, deeply
0:10:06 sensitive to the plight of others.
0:10:08 There’s no hierarchy of suffering.
0:10:14 When I looked at what happened on October 7th, it resonated deeply with me because it was the
0:10:16 worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
0:10:23 I felt that very strongly, but I also felt very strongly what happened every day after October
0:10:31 7th, including the horrific suffering of Palestinian boys and girls, women and men who were caught
0:10:38 in this horrific crossfire of Hamas’s initiation, something that they hadn’t started and were
0:10:39 powerless to stop.
0:10:44 When you look back over the history of Israel, how can you best describe how this country went
0:10:50 from being a largely celebrated Middle East democracy, which was under attack almost continuously
0:10:55 by its neighbors who oppose Western values, which aligned Israel further with the U.S.
0:11:00 And Israel defended itself and it got stronger militarily as well as economically.
0:11:07 And that was the reputation for a few decades to now where the public sentiment globally, in
0:11:12 many quarters at least, has been shifted towards basically called a settler colonial villain.
0:11:15 That’s the progressive left configuration, at least.
0:11:20 Can you describe the degree to which that was a change in perception, a change in facts on
0:11:26 the ground, things that Israel did prima facie wrong to bring that reputation onto itself versus
0:11:28 campaigns against it, et cetera?
0:11:29 Yeah, so much goes into that.
0:11:32 We could probably spend the entire time on that question, but just a few thoughts.
0:11:38 What you’ll hear many say, especially those who went through the Holocaust, went through
0:11:46 World War II, is they despised us and disdained us when we were weak and meek going off to
0:11:46 the slaughter.
0:11:49 Now they despise us and disdain us for being strong.
0:11:55 It’s a worldview that, in a sense, no matter what you do, the haters are going to hate.
0:12:01 It’s also a good political strategy for autocrats in that part of the world, a different version
0:12:02 of bread and circuses, I guess.
0:12:04 Yes, there’s something to that as well.
0:12:10 Part of the problem that we’re living through right now is an absence of any kind of historical
0:12:12 grounding, a lack of context.
0:12:16 And so, in brief, what happened in the Middle East with Israel?
0:12:21 When Israel was founded, when it declared its independence, there was a partition that was
0:12:24 recognized and voted by the United Nations.
0:12:32 It was not accepted in the moment by Arab countries, which urged the Palestinians to push back against
0:12:32 it.
0:12:34 There was a war of independence.
0:12:39 And, of course, many Palestinians were made refugees, just as a roughly equal number of
0:12:42 Jews were made refugees from Arab countries at the time.
0:12:48 And then you had decades during which Arab countries didn’t accept Israel’s existence.
0:12:49 You had wars.
0:12:50 You had 67.
0:12:52 You had 73.
0:12:54 But then, ultimately, you had a change and a breakthrough.
0:12:58 Egypt, Jordan, and then others came around.
0:13:04 And then efforts were made to finally resolve the question, including the question for the
0:13:05 Palestinians.
0:13:11 But, unfortunately, in that period, Palestinian leadership rejected many of the settlements that
0:13:12 were proposed.
0:13:14 We’re up to Oslo now?
0:13:16 We’re up to Oslo and then Camp David.
0:13:19 And right up to the early 2000s.
0:13:24 I had an interesting conversation the other day with a young person who was really interested
0:13:28 in this political story and definitely knew quite a bit about the current events.
0:13:34 They, however, did not know about the Oslo Accords at all, which surprised me because to me it doesn’t
0:13:36 seem that long ago and it was foundational.
0:13:41 This gets to what you were saying a bit ago about living in a, I don’t know if it’s fair
0:13:43 to call it, an ahistoric age.
0:13:45 I think it’s probably pretty fair.
0:13:49 You’ve got Oslo, you’ve got what President Clinton did at Camp David, where the offer on the table
0:13:54 for the Palestinians was about 97 percent of the West Bank.
0:13:56 And they said no.
0:13:58 The leadership couldn’t say yes.
0:14:04 And if you had to explain those decades of rejection, those various plans, maybe going back
0:14:08 to Arafat and up through Hamas, how would you shorthand it?
0:14:11 I think part of it was a rejection, actually, of a two-state solution.
0:14:18 Every time things were moving in a positive direction, Oslo, you mentioned, and then later
0:14:22 in the early 2000s, the Arab Peace Initiative, which was a big moment when Arab countries
0:14:24 got behind a two-state solution.
0:14:28 Who came along immediately and tried to literally blow it up?
0:14:35 Hamas, perpetrating horrific terrorist attacks after Oslo and after the Arab Peace Initiative.
0:14:40 The biggest opponent of a two-state solution throughout has been Hamas.
0:14:44 One of the things I say to Israelis and others who say, oh, we can’t make an accommodation
0:14:47 with the Palestinians now because it would be to give Hamas a big victory.
0:14:49 No, it’s exactly the opposite.
0:14:54 The ultimate defeat of Hamas and everything it represents would be the realization of a Palestinian
0:14:56 Palestinian state with a secure Israel.
0:14:59 So you have decades of Arab rejection.
0:15:03 Then you have a couple of decades of Palestinian rejection.
0:15:06 But what do we have over the last 15 or so years?
0:15:12 In effect, Israeli rejection, a belief that the status quo could prevail and that it didn’t
0:15:18 need to accommodate the rightful aspirations of Palestinians for a state of their own.
0:15:21 This is, in some ways, not hard to understand.
0:15:24 The Israelis got out of Gaza in 2005.
0:15:27 They pulled up every settlement, every settler.
0:15:28 What happened?
0:15:36 Hamas came in, managed to push out the more moderate Palestinian authority, and then repeatedly launched
0:15:40 attacks against Israel from Gaza, ultimately culminating in October 7th.
0:15:45 So, from the Israeli perspective, it’s, wait a minute, we gave up the land.
0:15:47 We gave up the settlements.
0:15:48 We got out.
0:15:49 And what did we get?
0:15:50 We got Hamas.
0:15:58 Similarly, in the north, after occupying southern Lebanon for 18 years, they left.
0:15:59 And what happened?
0:16:05 Hezbollah came in and launched attacks against northern Israel repeatedly.
0:16:11 So, if you put yourself in their shoes, I think their feeling was, you know, decades of rejection
0:16:11 by Arabs.
0:16:18 Then we had extremist groups who, again, rejected our existence and sought our destruction.
0:16:22 But then finally, they got to a place where they thought they had a status quo that could
0:16:26 prevail, where after the second intifada, there was relative quiet and relative calm.
0:16:31 And I think Israelis were lulled into a sense that, okay, we don’t have to do anything.
0:16:36 Tell me any regrets you’re willing to admit about how you and the Biden administration handled
0:16:36 the Gaza war?
0:16:39 Oh, look, there are regrets every day.
0:16:42 There can’t not be when you look at the toll of the suffering.
0:16:46 As we were looking at it, we were trying to accomplish a few things at the same time.
0:16:50 One was to try to ensure that October 7th never happened again.
0:16:54 I’ve heard you say that before, and I’m curious what that actually means, because there are a lot of
0:16:59 Israelis who say the only way to make sure October 7th never happens again is that we don’t have
0:17:01 Palestinians living next door to us.
0:17:02 Full stop.
0:17:06 I understand that response, but I think it’s both a fantasy and a fallacy.
0:17:08 The reality is this.
0:17:14 There are something like 7 million Jews in Israel, and they’re probably approaching 6 million
0:17:18 Palestinians between the West Bank and Israel and Gaza.
0:17:23 Neither is going anywhere, despite whatever fantasies some people may have on both sides.
0:17:30 The question then is, if people are going to have to live together, what’s the best way
0:17:37 to do that such that each can fulfill their aspirations in peace and security?
0:17:43 And I don’t see any other way, despite the fact that when you say it now, it sounds incredibly
0:17:43 naive.
0:17:47 I don’t see any other way than through two states.
0:17:54 I’ve been reading lately about some developments in the West Bank, particularly among several
0:17:58 Arab tribal elders who have said they want to get rid of the Palestinian Authority.
0:18:02 Sounds like they’re afraid that they are next after Gaza.
0:18:07 They call the Palestinian Authority corrupt, bloodthirsty, and they want to set up their
0:18:13 own tribal emirates that would normalize relations with Israel and join the Abraham Accords.
0:18:18 Is that a viable path to peace in Israel of some type, or is that total pipe dream?
0:18:25 There’s a lot that goes into this, not the least of which is, yes, there are huge challenges
0:18:31 with the Palestinian Authority, including the corruption, including the inability to really
0:18:33 deliver what people need and want.
0:18:39 The reform of the Authority is one of the things I think that’s essential going forward so that
0:18:45 it can actually effectively represent the interests and needs of the Palestinian people.
0:18:46 Absent that, it’s going to be very challenging.
0:18:51 And that also breeds tremendous frustration, including what you just alluded to.
0:18:55 But there’s something else that the Authority for all of its manifest problems and faults
0:19:03 brought to the table, which has been nonviolence, finding ways to fulfill the aspirations of
0:19:05 Palestinians without resorting to violence.
0:19:11 The alternative to that is something we’ve seen and can’t possibly accept.
0:19:16 I was talking before about how I think the Israelis got comfortable with the status quo.
0:19:21 And in trying to perpetuate that status quo of not having to address the aspirations of
0:19:27 Palestinians for a state, they also pursued policies that made it very difficult for the
0:19:29 Palestinian Authority to be effective.
0:19:30 For instance?
0:19:33 Starving it of resources, trying to keep it down.
0:19:41 And even in the case of Gaza, allowing Hamas to run things, allowing it to get resources from
0:19:46 Qatar, because Israelis believed or governments believed that Hamas’s only interest was in
0:19:51 consolidating its power in Gaza, not necessarily in attacking Israel.
0:19:54 And that proved to be a fatal, fatal mistake.
0:19:58 But also because there was a real interest on the part of some of the Israeli leadership
0:20:02 to make sure that the Palestinian Authority could never become strong and effective, because
0:20:07 that would mean Israel would actually have a partner with which to negotiate and to try to
0:20:11 decide the future, including the future for a Palestinian state.
0:20:17 A lot of these points you’re making now add up to or contribute to the argument that Netanyahu
0:20:20 is a particular type of political opportunist.
0:20:25 I know that President Biden himself and many members of the administration complained about
0:20:26 just not being able to trust him.
0:20:31 You’ve spent a lot of time with him in a variety of rooms, I assume.
0:20:37 Give me your best assessment of Netanyahu as a strategic thinker and as a trustworthy partner,
0:20:40 whether for the U.S. or some of the neighbors.
0:20:47 Whatever one thinks of the prime minister, it’s a mistake and it’s a simplification to attribute
0:20:52 to him everything one may not like about what Israel does.
0:21:01 At least since October 7th, I’d say 75, 80 percent of the Israeli public has been behind
0:21:07 the basic policies of the government, even the 50 or so percent that probably detest Netanyahu.
0:21:12 And we should say that was a big reversal because during the judicial reform debate, it was almost
0:21:13 the opposite, was it not?
0:21:14 Yeah, that’s right.
0:21:20 In the case of Israelis, October 7th was truly a day that lives in infamy.
0:21:28 The national trauma cannot possibly be overstated, just as in the day since October 7th, the trauma
0:21:30 for Palestinians can’t be overstated.
0:21:36 What we’ve had in both directions, and it was already there, of course, but it’s only been
0:21:43 accentuated and accelerated since then, is dehumanization, an inability on each side to see the humanity
0:21:50 and the other. Breaking through that, I think, is the most important, challenging, and difficult
0:21:55 task that lays ahead if there’s going to be a future that actually does justice to Israelis
0:21:57 and Palestinians alike.
0:22:02 What do you see as the drivers of the dehumanization that you’re describing, whether it’s having to
0:22:06 do with Israel and the Palestinians, but you could point at many, many places around the
0:22:11 globe, really at any time in history. So I guess what I’m really asking is, do you see this
0:22:18 as a core component of human nature that’s maybe inescapable, or is it something more flexible than
0:22:18 that?
0:22:23 I think we are living a unique moment. President Biden referred to it repeatedly as an inflection
0:22:28 point, something that comes along maybe every 70, 80 years if you look at the course of history.
0:22:33 And I think it explains, to a great extent, so much of what we’re experiencing, including
0:22:39 this issue of dehumanization. I’ve been doing this now, foreign policy, national security,
0:22:44 America’s place in the world, for more than 30 years. I don’t remember any point in my experience
0:22:51 where we had a greater multiplicity, a greater complexity, a greater interconnectedness, a greater
0:22:56 rapidity of challenges and problems all coming together.
0:23:03 Let’s go to Syria for a moment. After nearly 15 years of civil war in Syria, it took only 11 days
0:23:09 for this rebel offensive to oust Bashar al-Assad, which ended his family’s rule of five decades.
0:23:18 This came very near the end of the Biden presidency. What did you know as that was happening? And did the
0:23:20 U.S. contribute in any way?
0:23:25 I wish I could tell you that we saw it coming. We didn’t. It was a surprise to us. I think it was a
0:23:30 surprise to pretty much everyone. But when it came, I have to say, for so many of us, especially those
0:23:35 of us who’d been involved in the early days of the Syrian civil war and all the horrors that that brought,
0:23:42 there was a great sense of not just satisfaction at the departure of Assad, but also a sense of finally,
0:23:48 the possibility. This was and is an opportunity for the Syrian people for the first time in decades
0:23:55 not to live either under a dictator, under the manipulations of foreign powers, or under the thumb
0:24:01 of some kind of extremist terrorist organization like ISIS. We worked very hard in the very little time that
0:24:07 we had left to try to seize that, to try to engage the new authorities as they were emerging, to work very
0:24:11 closely with countries in the region, the Arab countries, Turkey, and others, to see what we
0:24:16 could do about helping to support the more positive forces that have been unleashed in Syria.
0:24:22 Tell us what you know about the new president, Ahmed al-Shara. This is a former al-Qaeda commander.
0:24:22 That’s right.
0:24:26 Who had a $10 million bounty out on him, but now he’s the president. And he’s talked
0:24:32 about peace and reconciliation, including with Israel. So, and I know one of your former colleagues,
0:24:38 Roger Carston said he walked away from a meeting very impressed with his presentation, at least.
0:24:39 What’s your take?
0:24:43 Yeah, I sent several of my former colleagues to engage with the new Syrian authorities,
0:24:48 including al-Shara. And you’re right about his past. The real question is, what’s his present?
0:24:54 Everything that he said over the last six to nine months has been what you’d want to hear,
0:24:59 has been very positive about not only the future that he wants for his country, but also for its
0:25:04 relationships with countries in the region and around the world. The test is, of course,
0:25:10 not what he says, but what he does. And he’s got a massively challenging job precisely because of the
0:25:15 nature of the country, the many different communities in opposition to each other, including, for example,
0:25:21 the Kurds, with whom we’ve had a critical partnership in trying first to defeat ISIS and then to keep it
0:25:25 down. But I have to tell you, Stephen, I applaud what the Trump administration, what President Trump
0:25:32 has done in trying to seize this opportunity, in removing the sanctions from al-Shara and from Syria,
0:25:39 in opening the door to investment, in trying to work on how we can support the efforts of this
0:25:41 country to stand effectively on its own two feet.
0:25:48 As an American, is it naive to think, oh, well, with Syria moving in the direction it’s moving in now,
0:25:55 then Iran really remains the last stronghold of anti-Western, anti-strong, anti-Israel sentiment in
0:26:01 that region. And therefore, we really have reached a new stage. Is that naive? Is this just another,
0:26:04 you know, chapter in a book that keeps telling the same story?
0:26:12 I think we have reached a new stage if we take advantage of it. For example, translating the
0:26:19 very significant military achievements of Israel into actual enduring strategic success. Those are
0:26:24 two very different questions because you’re exactly right. Iran really is on its heels in many ways.
0:26:29 It’s lost its best proxies, or at least had them dramatically diminished, whether it’s Hezbollah,
0:26:36 whether it’s Hamas, whether it’s its own capacity. At the same time, we’ve seen something new. The real
0:26:42 possibility that this region could be integrated. These countries could come together in common
0:26:50 security packs, in economic interaction that can better the lives of their people and create a region
0:26:56 that’s focused on actually building positive things. So that possibility is real, but I don’t think it can
0:27:01 be achieved or certainly not fully achieved absent the resolution of the conflict between Israelis and
0:27:07 Palestinians. That is the wrench in the works that one way or another is going to have to be dealt with
0:27:12 because absent dealing with it, it does put real limitations on how far a number of these countries
0:27:18 can go and actually genuinely normalizing relations with Israel and building this new region. You can see
0:27:24 it, you can touch it, but it still needs that resolution if it’s really going to become real.
0:27:32 Coming up after the break, more on Iran and China, too. And we asked Blinken about the Trump
0:27:37 administration laying off more than a thousand employees of the State Department. I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:27:40 This is Freakonomics Radio. We’ll be right back.
0:27:55 The State Department just announced 1,300 layoffs, what you government types call a reduction in force.
0:27:59 Tell me what you know about that and what you think the ramifications will be.
0:28:04 You know, Stephen, I’ve worked with colleagues in the State Department going on 30 years now. I started
0:28:10 there in 93 and obviously finished there just six months ago. To the extent that any administration
0:28:17 has any, I don’t know, suspicion about a deep state or the allegiances of the people who work at the
0:28:22 department, they’re totally misplaced. Of all the people, the hundreds, the thousands of people I work
0:28:27 with, I doubt I could tell you for nine out of 10, if not more, who’s a Democrat, who’s a Republican,
0:28:34 who’s an independent. But beyond that, you’ve got extraordinary young and not so young
0:28:39 men and women who dedicated their lives to public service, who could be doing other things and
0:28:44 probably making a lot more money. But for one reason or another, either straight out of school
0:28:52 or more and more coming from other careers have felt the call to serve and to do things for their
0:28:56 fellow Americans. If you’re traveling abroad, you get into trouble, you lose your passport, there’s
0:29:01 some crime that’s committed. It’s likely going to be someone from our foreign service who comes to
0:29:07 your rescue who bails you out. If you’re trying to reunite families around the world, that’s what
0:29:10 they’re doing. If we’re looking for business opportunities, they’re the ones who are helping
0:29:18 to find them, especially on the big issues of war and peace. Diplomacy every single day is all about
0:29:22 preventing bad things from happening in the first place or trying to deal with them effectively if they
0:29:28 do. It’s work that Americans don’t see, but they benefit from. And so if we’re diminishing our
0:29:34 capacity to do that work by eliminating so many jobs, I think it’s a big mistake for us.
0:29:39 Here’s what Tim Kaine, Democratic Senator for Virginia, former VP candidate, said about these
0:29:45 layoffs. This is one of the most ridiculous decisions that could possibly be made at a time when China is
0:29:51 increasing its diplomatic footprint around the world and establishing an overseas network of military and
0:29:56 transportation bases. I’d like you to talk about that. Let’s imagine that Kamala Harris or some other
0:30:01 Democrat had won the White House last year and you’re still secretary of state right now.
0:30:06 What would your China agenda be for the next few years?
0:30:11 Well, Tim’s exactly right. Right now, China has more embassies around the world than we do.
0:30:16 And if we’re going to be shutting even more down, that gap’s only going to increase. What does that
0:30:20 mean in a very practical way? We’re in competition with China over a lot of things. And if we’re in a
0:30:25 country where the Chinese have an ambassador and we don’t even have an embassy or just as bad,
0:30:30 in some ways we don’t have an accredited ambassador because the Senate has refused to confirm that
0:30:37 person. And by the way, here, it is totally, totally dysfunctional. 20 years ago, it was about 40 days
0:30:44 from nomination to confirmation for U.S. ambassador. Now it’s 250 days on average. And that means that
0:30:49 when something’s happening in that country and we need to get in to see the president or the prime
0:30:53 minister on short notice and the Chinese want to do the same thing for their own reasons,
0:30:59 they’ll get in. We won’t. That puts us at a disadvantage. But beyond that, if we’re looking
0:31:04 at economic issues where we have problems with China, if we’re doing it alone, we’re 20% of world GDP.
0:31:08 If we’re doing it with European partners, with Northeast Asian partners, with others,
0:31:14 we’re 40 or 50%, 60% of world GDP. A lot harder for China to ignore. We’re trying to cover a lot of ground
0:31:19 around the world. Even the United States can’t cover it all alone. For example, all of these Pacific islands,
0:31:25 a vast amount of territory strategically located. China’s present just about everywhere. We increased
0:31:31 our presence. I opened more embassies in that part of the world. But if we’re also allied and we’re
0:31:38 working in close coordination with, let’s say, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, we’re going to cover
0:31:43 much more ground. But all of that takes day in, day out diplomacy to actually happen.
0:31:48 I’ve been reading a lot about an axis of some sort, a word that I believe you don’t use, but others do,
0:31:58 between China, Russia, and Iran, sometimes North Korea. I’m particularly curious to know what you think about
0:32:05 why neither China nor Russia stepped in to help Iran when they were being attacked by Israel and the U.S.
0:32:09 I mean, maybe it’s an obvious answer that they fear the U.S. more than they care about Iran,
0:32:13 but I thought maybe there’s something there worth our knowing that we don’t know.
0:32:18 There are revisionist powers, that’s what I’d call them, to include China, to include Russia,
0:32:22 to include North Korea, to include Iran. And sometimes they have marriages of convenience,
0:32:28 if not conviction. For example, China wants to make sure that Russia doesn’t fail in its war against
0:32:35 Ukraine. And as a result, it’s providing Russia with a tremendous amount of the technology and
0:32:39 equipment it needs to keep its war machine going. Even with all of the sanctions and export controls
0:32:45 that we’ve imposed and others have imposed, China now is providing about 70% of the machine tools and
0:32:51 about 90% of the microelectronics that Russia needs for its defense industrial base to keep that machine
0:32:56 humming. North Korea is also a strong supporter and ally of Russia in its war against Ukraine,
0:33:01 is providing it with missiles and other technology. And people. Yes, and people, exactly. But again,
0:33:06 this is more out of convenience than out of conviction. And in a way, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
0:33:14 But when it comes to Iran, what you saw was quite extraordinary. Russia certainly didn’t come to
0:33:18 Iran’s assistance, in large part because it was bogged down in a war of its own making in Ukraine,
0:33:24 and bogged down in large part because we took the lead in making sure that Ukraine could effectively
0:33:29 defend itself. That made it very difficult for Russia to do much of anything else, anywhere else.
0:33:36 I think the Chinese, on one level, can sometimes talk a big game, but then when push comes to shove,
0:33:39 especially if there’s a conflict, they tend to look the other way.
0:33:42 Let’s talk a little bit more about Iran. First of all,
0:33:46 what kind of relationships did you have with counterparts there during your time in state?
0:33:50 Oh, very little. It’s one of the deficits that we’ve had with Iran for many years is obviously
0:33:56 the absence of diplomatic relations has meant that we’re not there. We have very little direct
0:34:01 engagement. The Iranian regime refused direct engagement with us as we were trying to see if
0:34:05 we could revive the nuclear agreement that President Obama had signed and that President Trump the first
0:34:10 time around tore up. That makes it more difficult. We’re often acting through intermediaries. Now,
0:34:14 we do have some direct contact, including, for example, through the Iranian ambassador to the
0:34:19 United Nations in New York, but much of everything else is indirect. It might be through the Qataris.
0:34:22 It might be through the Amanis, but it’s not direct.
0:34:26 What about the IAEA, the Atomic Energy Agency?
0:34:32 Yes. They play a critical role. Their eyes and ears that we don’t have in the same way on the ground
0:34:37 in Iran to verify, for example, when we have the nuclear agreement, that Iran was actually abiding by its
0:34:43 terms. And it was. Our own intelligence, of course, worked to verify that, and that was their conclusion
0:34:49 too. But the IAEA plays a really essential role in making sure that we have some visibility on what
0:34:50 the Iranians are actually doing.
0:34:58 I’ve read numbers about the Iranian population that wants regime change, and those numbers are all over
0:35:04 the place. I can imagine that’s a hard survey to conduct for a variety of reasons. I’m just curious
0:35:11 what you think that the country wants, what share of the population you think wants regime change,
0:35:16 and what you think that regime looks like a year or three from now.
0:35:19 The real answer when it comes to what does the regime look like a year or two or three from now
0:35:25 is that when it comes to an autocratic regime, it’s there until it’s not. Anyone who tells you with
0:35:29 precision that they know that it’s got another six months, it’s got another year, five years,
0:35:32 I wouldn’t abide by that because no one knows.
0:35:33 Look at Assad.
0:35:39 Exactly. Our own absence of real connectivity with the Iranians, our own absence of being on the ground
0:35:43 and having diplomatic relations not only with the government, but actual connections with the
0:35:48 people makes it really hard to answer that question. In terms of popular support, you’re right. They’re
0:35:54 very different assessments. I would imagine that probably a majority of Iranians do not support the
0:36:01 regime, whether that’s 51% or 75% or 80%. I can’t tell you. The country is divided. It’s divided in
0:36:07 some ways between urban and rural. You may have many more opponents of the regime in urban areas and
0:36:13 fewer in rural areas. There really is a conservative element, but there are different reasons for opposing
0:36:19 the regime. One of them is the fact that this is a regime that’s focused more on doing bad things to
0:36:23 others than on doing good things for the Iranian people. If your slogan is death to America, not,
0:36:26 you know, long live Iran, you’ve got a problem.
0:36:33 Can you explain the Iranian leadership devotion to that path? Not only death to America, death to
0:36:39 Israel, arming and training those proxy militias throughout the region. How would you looking at
0:36:44 it as a kind of political economy question, assess the leadership’s motivation there? What’s the end
0:36:46 game? What are they trying to accomplish?
0:36:53 For the clerical regime, it is in many ways, the raison d’etre. If they lose that, they fear that
0:37:00 they lose, period. And so opposition to America, opposition to the great Satan has been a driving
0:37:03 force, has been a glue that’s kept things together now for decades.
0:37:08 I know that works in theory, but as we were just discussing, if a large share of the population
0:37:15 is not interested in that, how can that be the raison d’etre, especially when it’s produced costs for the
0:37:19 population, right? Electricity, transportation, all these things have become difficult there.
0:37:22 Why would that be a good reason for their existence?
0:37:27 I don’t think it is a good reason. But beyond that, one of the more astute Iran watchers,
0:37:34 Karim Sajidpour, I think called the regime recently basically a zombie state. It’s institutionalized
0:37:40 over these many decades, this repressive apparatus. And even though the state is kind of operating on
0:37:45 an ideological autopilot that doesn’t actually comport with the interests of the Iranian people,
0:37:51 the repressive apparatus is so deeply ingrained. And of course, it’s got a monopoly on arms and force.
0:37:58 It’s got the repressive tools of any such regime in terms of information, intelligence, spying on
0:38:04 people, that even if a large number, even if an overwhelming majority opposes the regime, it’s one
0:38:09 thing to oppose it. It’s another thing to do something about it. But again, I just come back to what I said
0:38:14 earlier. I think we have to have some humility in predicting what the longevity of this regime is.
0:38:20 Let’s go back to the State Department for a minute. In addition to the reduction in force,
0:38:27 there have been many changes, whether procedural, philosophical, etc. I know you’ve got a relationship
0:38:32 with Marco Rubio going back to Senate Foreign Relations. I’ve heard you speak respectfully about
0:38:37 Marco Rubio, current Secretary of State. I’ve also heard you speak relatively respectfully about
0:38:44 Donald Trump himself more than many high profile Democrats. I also know you’re not the kind of guy
0:38:50 who wants to take a flamethrower to the next administration, but there are enough substantial
0:38:55 changes in policy that I’m guessing you have some major points you want to bring up.
0:38:59 Let me focus more on policies than on personalities. And Stephen, you’re right. I’m not a flamethrower.
0:39:02 In a sense, maybe I’m not made for these times.
0:39:11 Yes, it does because I think so many of us were brought up with certain ideals about public discourse,
0:39:18 the public square, public service, and those are being challenged. Now, maybe we’re archaic. Maybe
0:39:23 we’re naive. Maybe we’re missing new realities. But that’s who I am. And I try to be faithful to that.
0:39:30 Leaving that aside, I obviously have profound concerns about some of what we’ve seen over the
0:39:36 last six months. Take foreign aid cuts and the dismantling of USAID. You know, it’s interesting.
0:39:41 You see this in survey after survey. You ask Americans, how much money are we spending on
0:39:45 foreign aid and the State Department? And they say, oh, God, we’re spending 20% of our budget on it.
0:39:50 Well, how much should we be spending? 10%. How much are we spending? 1%.
0:39:57 One penny on every dollar. That’s the budget of what used to be AID, the State Department,
0:40:03 our assistance programs. And if I say to you, Tony, even 1% for a big country like this is a lot,
0:40:07 what’s the ROI on that 1%? What have we been getting for that? How do you answer that question?
0:40:11 Yeah, the ROI is two things. One, it’s the extraordinary amount of good that we’ve been
0:40:17 able to do around the world. That, to some people, may not be something that resonates. Although I
0:40:21 actually think for most Americans, it does, especially when you look at the bargain that it is.
0:40:26 in terms of our budget, just take one of, to me, the greatest achievements of our foreign policy
0:40:30 over the last decades. And that’s something that President Bush did, PEPFAR, the president’s
0:40:38 program to deal with HIV, AIDS, and malaria around the world. Some 25 million lives that otherwise would
0:40:43 have been lost were saved. And so many stories got to continue, and so many people got to contribute
0:40:50 to making their countries better. The Lancet, a very reputable journal, came out with a study a couple
0:40:57 of weeks ago that extrapolating from the good that was done by our assistance programs, and particularly
0:41:03 AID, over the last decades and the lives that were saved, calculated that with the cuts that are being
0:41:11 made now, they modeled funding cuts of about 85%, which is what the administration announced, that on that
0:41:21 basis, it is likely that as many as 14 million people who would otherwise be alive will die by 2030, one third of
0:41:28 them children under five years old. Causes of death would be what? Malnutrition, disease, lack of access to
0:41:36 health care. There must be Republicans in state who understand this the way you understand it. Let’s use
0:41:42 this as a microcosm of how the Trump presidency has been unfurling. Assuming that there are Republicans
0:41:48 who see the excellent ROI, as you’re describing, of foreign aid like this. Why was that spiked then?
0:41:57 Look, as a political matter, if you’re talking about foreigners, foreign aid, government workers, or elite
0:42:03 institutions, you’re not on strong political ground. And so if that’s what the conversation is about,
0:42:09 yeah, I see where it goes. But that’s why it’s so important to try to connect the dots
0:42:15 and also tell the stories about what does this actually mean. Even if you are not moved by the
0:42:20 fact that for one penny on the dollar, we can actually save all these lives, we have an interest
0:42:25 in doing it that goes beyond what’s the good and right thing to do. What’s the self-interested thing
0:42:31 to do? We know that left unattended, a problem halfway around the world easily comes and bites us.
0:42:37 There’s a very good reason that when COVID was running rampant, we ended up leading the way
0:42:42 in getting vaccines free of charge, no political strings attached to countries around the world who
0:42:48 needed them. That’s because even if we were doing everything right at home and COVID went into abeyance
0:42:53 here, if some new variant emerged somewhere else, it was going to come and hit us and we’d be right
0:42:58 back to square one. This gets back to, Stephen, to the way we looked at the world after World War II and
0:43:02 that we’re getting away from. And that’s something very powerful called enlightened self-interest.
0:43:07 After World War II, we had a choice to make, very much like the choice we had to make after World
0:43:12 War I. Do we pull back? Do we retreat from the world? Do we hunker down? Do we become somewhat
0:43:18 isolationist? Do we become somewhat protectionist? Do we put walls up against people trying to come to
0:43:24 these shores legally to make a better life? Or do we lean in? Do we engage? And after World War I,
0:43:28 we made one series of choices. After World War II, we made a different series of choices.
0:43:33 At the heart of that choice was enlightened self-interest, the notion that the success of
0:43:37 others is actually to our benefit. What happened with these investments we made after World War II?
0:43:42 We got new markets for our products because countries were successful and they could buy things.
0:43:47 We had new partners to deal with challenges that we were not capable really effectively of dealing
0:43:51 with alone. And we ended up with new allies so that we could prevent aggression from happening in the
0:43:56 first place because we all banded together and said, an attack on one of us is an attack on all
0:44:02 of us. That was really smart. And it produced, with all of the incredible imperfections, nonetheless,
0:44:05 80 extraordinary years of progress.
0:44:11 When you talk about enlightened self-interest, it made me think of, there was a Nobel Prize speech
0:44:17 given by Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher. This was in 1950. He talked about there were four
0:44:27 four drivers, four key drivers of all human action. They are acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love
0:44:30 of power. Nowhere on that list is enlightened self-interest.
0:44:36 So I guess I’m getting to a more basic or philosophical question, which has to do with
0:44:43 the nature of humankind. And this also might connect us to a conversation about the famous Francis Fukuyama
0:44:49 argument about the end of history, which basically declared that democracy has won. And in the decades
0:44:54 since then, we’ve seen, obviously, a return to a political style in many countries that looks much
0:45:01 more like the might is right argument versus the enlightened self-interest model. Do you feel then
0:45:07 that you and I and many others had the fortune to be born into that period where there was a relative
0:45:13 moderation, but that now we’re returning to the natural state of punching each other in the nose and
0:45:14 taking what we can?
0:45:22 Yes, but the notion that, you know, life is nasty, brutish, and short has real salience. It may be, and there’s
0:45:27 one theory of history, that the natural state of things is not what we experienced, broadly speaking, over the
0:45:34 last 80 years. That nasty, brutish, and short is more the norm. That poverty is more the norm than productivity
0:45:42 and progress, and that it is only through exceptional decisions and endeavors that we can break out of the
0:45:42 norm.
0:45:46 Do you buy that argument, or are you saying, no, we’ve superseded it?
0:45:51 No, I guess I see it differently. And I think looking at the extraordinary sweep of history, it does seem to
0:45:58 me that we’ve been on an arc of progress, albeit one that sometimes bends in the wrong direction, and
0:46:04 occasionally breaks. The question is whether that arc can continue, and we can try to
0:46:08 make sure that when it’s under incredible strain, as it will be in this period, it doesn’t break.
0:46:13 I’m guessing you know the work of scholars, Tom Schelling and others, who’ve argued over the years
0:46:19 that for many, many, many generations, civilization really was built around competition and conflict,
0:46:25 right? There weren’t many resources, so you fought over them. But that we’ve entered a period where
0:46:31 we know how to make stuff at scale, we know how to grow food at scale. And so you would think that we
0:46:37 would have transitioned over into a period of collaboration and cooperation versus competition
0:46:42 and so on. But it feels to me as if we’ve retreated from that.
0:46:49 I don’t think this is zero-sum choice. Competition is a good thing. It’s the basis of our system. It’s a
0:46:56 driver of progress. I think done right, done fairly, it tends to bring out the best in people. Certainly,
0:47:02 that’s been the experience in the United States. So I don’t see it as being detrimental or undermining
0:47:10 of collaboration, cooperation, and non-zero-sum outcomes. On the contrary, yes, you’ve got to have
0:47:17 often individual ingenuity and innovation. But so many of these things, to be successful,
0:47:22 are collective enterprises. For example, I was talking about the extraordinary engine for
0:47:28 innovation and progress that the United States has been since the end of World War II. At the start of
0:47:35 the 20th century, there was no branch of science in which the United States led the world. At the
0:47:39 start of the 21st century, there was no branch of science in which the United States did not lead the
0:47:47 world. How did that happen? I think it happened because some profoundly smart decisions were made
0:47:53 about the country and how it should operate, mostly after the Second World War. Maybe the most important
0:47:58 among them was this extraordinary public-private partnership between the government, private
0:48:07 sector, and especially our universities. By about a year ago, we had something like 3.5% of our GDP that
0:48:12 was dedicated to research and development, a trillion dollars a year, 40% of that coming from the federal
0:48:19 government, and much of that going to universities to make these advances. We’ve managed to be this
0:48:25 extraordinary pull of attraction for the most talented people in the world who come here, think
0:48:31 here, invent here, create here, and many stay here, which is what we want. I was really struck by
0:48:37 something the other day. You saw that Mark Zuckerberg went on this extraordinary, what do you call it?
0:48:44 Hiring spree. Buying spree, hiring spree, to find the best possible talent for AI. He wound up bringing
0:48:50 in 11 extraordinary talents. I was kind of curious about it because I saw their names, and it really
0:48:57 jumps out at you. It’s not John Smith. The 11 people, they’re from China, they’re from India, they’re from
0:49:04 the UK, they’re from South Africa, they’re from Australia. Each one of them an immigrant to this
0:49:13 country. Each one of them, I believe, came here to pursue academic studies, research, work, and now
0:49:20 they are in the vanguard of what, in a positive sense, is going to carry our society and our civilization
0:49:28 forward. That is, AI for good. But if we wind up in a place where that talent no longer comes here
0:49:33 because it can’t or doesn’t want to, what are we going to be condemning ourselves to?
0:49:43 Coming up after the break, what are we condemning ourselves to? And can a 19th century worldview
0:49:49 work in the 21st? I’m Stephen Dubner, speaking today with former Secretary of State Tony Blinken,
0:49:50 and we will be right back.
0:50:06 How well do you know Donald Trump? Have you spent time with him?
0:50:07 I don’t know the president.
0:50:08 Never met him?
0:50:14 I’ve not met him. Of course, I know many people who know him. And look, I think the president has
0:50:19 extraordinary instincts when it comes to the American people. And he taps into that very
0:50:25 powerfully. Maybe the most important economy that we have now is the attention economy. And his ability
0:50:29 to dominate that economy is a source of great strength and great power.
0:50:35 I mean, those are fairly faint praises with which you’re damning him in terms of bigger thinking,
0:50:42 strategic thinking, political alliances, and so on. I know you’re too polite to give him a failing
0:50:46 grade, but- No, I just have a very different worldview. As I try to understand where President
0:50:52 Trump is going and how he sees the world, I think it’s an interesting combination of the 19th century
0:50:58 and the 1980s, by which I mean this. The president seems to, this is not a secret, respect first and
0:51:03 foremost people he perceives as strong leaders in strong countries. And maybe until very recently,
0:51:09 that was Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, maybe it’s Erdogan in Turkey, maybe it’s the crown prince in
0:51:14 Saudi Arabia. In that worldview, and in the 19th century, remember, we had spheres of influence.
0:51:21 The big guys, and I mean guys, got to basically run things in their part of the world.
0:51:27 Regional hegemons. Regional hegemons. And in that view, Russia would be one. And so what it does in
0:51:31 its part of the world, including Ukraine, that’s its business. China would be another, with the
0:51:37 exception, and this gets to the 1980s piece, of economic and trade issues. Because I think the
0:51:41 president does have a being in his bonnet about that. They get to do whatever they want in their
0:51:45 part of the world, which is why I do have concerns about what does this mean for Taiwan? What does it
0:51:50 mean for Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea? And we get to do what we want in our part.
0:51:55 Maybe that’s Greenland. Maybe that’s Canada. Maybe that’s the Panama Canal. What’s interesting about
0:52:01 that, Stephen, is that, yes, in the 19th century, actually having the land, owning the land, dominating
0:52:07 the land was important. That’s no longer the case. That’s not necessary. You can cut a deal. You can make
0:52:13 an agreement to get the benefits you want without actually having to take over the country or the land.
0:52:18 Just as in Greenland, we’ve got a really important military base. We have access through trade and
0:52:22 commercial relations to whatever raw materials can actually be gotten from there. It’s a really
0:52:28 difficult climate. So I think there’s that view. The 1980s pieces, again, coming up in New York in that
0:52:35 period, Japan Inc., the perception that we were being ripped off, to use a diplomatic term, taken advantage
0:52:40 of. And maybe there’s the real estate piece, too, which was very zero-sum. You’re in a deal. You’re either a
0:52:45 winner or you’re a loser. That’s very antithetical to the, what I was talking about earlier, enlightened
0:52:49 self-interest and the notion that actually, no, you want to strive for win-wins and that others doing
0:52:56 well means actually you can do better. What I worry about is this. Yes, others may have to make an
0:53:02 accommodation one time around. Maybe they have to give in on something to avoid a tariff. But then what’s the
0:53:08 likely motivation and instinct going to be? It’s going to be, instead of figuring out with us how to de-risk
0:53:12 from China, it’s going to be de-risked from the United States. How do we make sure that we’re not
0:53:19 in a position where the whims, the material nature of U.S. policy puts us at risk? And that means trying
0:53:24 to find ways to work around or away from the United States, to band together. One of the things that we
0:53:30 also avoided after World War II was what typically happens when one power emerges dominant over others,
0:53:35 which is everyone else gets together, they bandwagon to try to hold it in check. Because of
0:53:41 enlightened self-interest, because we tried to create a rules-based order, however imperfectly,
0:53:46 where we bound ourselves, again, imperfectly to the same rules as others, we constrained our own power,
0:53:52 we avoided what usually happens, that bandwagoning. I’m afraid now we’re actually going to see that
0:53:54 if we continue on this course.
0:53:59 On the other hand, all of a sudden, NATO seems to be quite fond of Donald Trump. At least,
0:54:05 you know, as of this conversation, a few weeks ago, there was that amazing press conference,
0:54:11 which I’m guessing you saw, then the statement from Mark Rutte, and it seems as though, I mean,
0:54:15 my reading of that, and I’m probably wrong, so I’d love you to tell me, but it seems as though
0:54:22 Trump, by making himself the least bad of the strong men, has made himself appealing to the
0:54:24 European NATO community. What do you see there?
0:54:28 Let’s put this in perspective. First, there’s this whole question of, you know, are our allies
0:54:32 spending enough on defense? The president complained a lot during his first term about free riders and
0:54:37 how we’re picking up all of the burden. There was a kernel of truth to that, to state the obvious.
0:54:43 But here’s the reality. Back in 2014, all of the NATO countries came together at one of their summits
0:54:48 in Wales, and they said, we’re all going to spend 2% of GDP on defense. That was the mark that they
0:54:54 set for themselves. When President Trump left office, a grand total of nine of our allies were spending
0:55:00 the 2% of GDP. Out of how many? Out of, at that point, 30. By the time President Biden left office,
0:55:07 23 of the allies were spending 2%. So, pretty big difference between the nine at the end of Trump one
0:55:12 and the 23 at the end of Biden. I think this is very positive. The agreement that came out of that
0:55:18 summit was that all allies agreed that the goal would now be to spend 5% of GDP on defense, which
0:55:23 is a pretty extraordinary number. We spend about 3.5%. But I have to say, if I really want to give
0:55:28 credit to anyone, it’s less President Trump or less, for that matter, President Biden than it is
0:55:29 President Putin.
0:55:36 Yes, a dark way of looking at the accomplishment, but I understand. Now, Donald Trump has been
0:55:41 discussed as a potential winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m guessing you’ve read about that
0:55:48 somewhere. I’m curious how much Biden thought about winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
0:55:53 I never heard him talk about it. I don’t think that was, at least to my knowledge, what motivated him.
0:55:56 You think it’s in the back of the mind of any president?
0:56:01 Oh, look, I imagine it is. It’s just, as I think about it, I can’t remember hearing him talk about it.
0:56:02 So that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
0:56:07 Now, you were in the Obama White House when Obama won the Peace Prize in 2009,
0:56:12 which was his first year in office. And a lot of people thought it was, you know, kind of nuts.
0:56:17 Oh, I think President Obama was probably first among them. I think he recognized that this was,
0:56:19 in a sense, a triumph of hope.
0:56:20 A down payment, maybe?
0:56:24 Maybe a down payment. What could be? What people hoped would be? And I think his speech,
0:56:28 which is remarkable, reflected that. I’d urge people to go back and read it. I think it actually
0:56:33 does a very good job of grappling with the world as it is, including what we were talking about a
0:56:38 little bit earlier. What is the actual state of nature? And how do we think about that? But no,
0:56:42 I think he recognized that it was, yes, as you would say, a down payment.
0:56:48 I want to ask about a lunch you had with President Biden a few weeks after his debate with Trump. This
0:56:54 was his disastrous debate, which ultimately led to his deciding not to run, but with a lot of chaos in
0:57:00 the interim. What I’ve read is that at this lunch, you said to him, look, everybody gets remembered in
0:57:06 one sentence. And it sounded as if, from what I’ve read, that you were cautioning him. You don’t want
0:57:14 your sentence to be old man becomes senile while sitting in the White House. I want you to walk us
0:57:20 through that. I want you to give us the most thorough assessment possible of the decline and fall of Joe
0:57:25 Biden while understanding that you had long experience and great loyalty and great affection
0:57:33 and admiration for him. You were among the closest to him. You were among the few who toward the end
0:57:35 was still getting his prime hours.
0:57:43 So first, the conversations we had, the exchanges we had, those are things that I try to keep to myself.
0:57:49 I’ve seen some of these accounts and I don’t want to say much more than that. Here’s what I can say and I’ll give
0:57:58 you my best judgment. First, when it comes to how to evaluate the president, his tenure, what he did and how he did
0:58:06 it, I think it’s actually pretty simple. Look at the policies the administration pursued, look at what we did and
0:58:13 then be the judge. You may like it or you may not like it. But the reason I say that is every single one of
0:58:20 those decisions and of those judgments was his. Not me, not some other cabinet secretary, not some senior
0:58:25 advisor, his. And I can tell you from my own experience, at least, that when it comes to foreign policy,
0:58:33 this is where, of course, I was engaged with him on everything that we did. We had the most robust of
0:58:39 debates, discussions, arguments that he drove. Let me ask you this. I don’t think anyone would deny the
0:58:44 level of political partisanship in the U.S. today and many other places, of course. And it’s been high in
0:58:50 the U.S. in the past, but it had been lower before this period. So we’re kind of getting re-acclimated to
0:58:57 it. Do you see political partisanship as a cause or a consequence of the political and economic
0:59:00 problems that we’re having in this country?
0:59:05 I think it’s a product of it in some ways, but it’s also an accelerant to it. There are also much
0:59:11 written about and much discussed systemic challenges that have exacerbated this. When you have congressional
0:59:16 districts that are drawn in such a way as to favor the most extreme views of one party or another,
0:59:20 if you have an information and media environment where to get attention, you have to yell the
0:59:26 loudest, then of course, all of that just feeds on itself. On the other hand, I don’t know, Stephen,
0:59:36 I still read or see every single day some profoundly positive story of human interaction, human decency,
0:59:45 of humanization, not dehumanization, that is just as abundant and not only just as powerful,
0:59:54 but maybe even more powerful. I still feel strongly that these forces that drive human progress and that
0:59:59 reflect the better angels of our nature, they’re still there. They’re still strong. They’re still
1:00:06 powerful. Part of our job is to figure out how to maximize them, how to give them flight. Awful hard
1:00:12 in the environment that we’re in, but I don’t believe in possible and I do believe absolutely necessary.
1:00:17 It sounds like you’re reading a lot. I know you had your security clearance taken away, so you’re not
1:00:22 reading classified information. I don’t know if you would have been typically a former secretary of state.
1:00:27 Would you typically have been? Honestly, probably not much, if at all. And there’s plenty of interesting
1:00:31 stuff to be found in what we would call the open source world. So I understand you’re writing a book,
1:00:36 Tony? I am. How’s it going? It’s going. It’s going. It’s actually something that first is a little bit
1:00:42 cathartic. Second, you know, I started out actually as a journalist, so I like to write. Every writer
1:00:47 knows there are painful periods where you’re looking at a blank page or a blank screen, but it is something
1:00:51 that I actually enjoy doing that I find is a creative outlet as well.
1:00:54 Can you distill what will be the juiciest bits?
1:00:56 No, God forbid.
1:00:57 Your publisher would murder you.
1:01:02 Yeah. If they listen to this and hear it, I’m really in trouble. Basically, what I’m writing about,
1:01:06 of course, is the four years of the Biden administration and everything that we had to
1:01:13 deal with and work on. And much of that is obvious. But from that, virtually everything we did
1:01:20 had some kind of relationship to a resonance in, something that I went through, experienced, learned
1:01:26 about, first encountered during other parts of my life, whether it was as a child or whether it was
1:01:30 working for President Clinton, President Obama, whatever it was.
1:01:32 Give me a for instance. What do you mean by that?
1:01:37 At one point early on after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, before I could actually get into Ukraine,
1:01:42 I decided that I would meet my Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Kuleba, the foreign minister then,
1:01:48 on the border between Poland and Ukraine and technically set foot into Ukraine. There was a border crossing
1:01:54 between Ukraine and Poland. I would meet him there and it was symbolic to send that message.
1:02:01 And then as we were researching that crossing point, it came out that that was exactly where
1:02:09 many years ago, my grandfather had crossed in the other direction from Ukraine, heading west to make
1:02:13 his way to the United States. Do you want to serve again if given the opportunity?
1:02:19 Look, I had the extraordinary experience and privilege of serving in what I think is the best job in the
1:02:22 country, best job in the world, Secretary of State. Why is that the best?
1:02:28 There’s something, in my experience at least, that was absolutely unique about serving in
1:02:32 government for the better part of 30 years. And that was going to work every single day with
1:02:37 the stars and stripes behind my back, both literally and figuratively. There’s nothing,
1:02:43 at least in my own experience, that equals that feeling, knowing that you had the extraordinary
1:02:51 strength, vitality, and history of this country literally at your back. That gave me tremendous
1:02:56 confidence when I was engaging in, you know, really difficult conversations or issues around the world.
1:03:01 Do you think by the time your kids who are young now are old enough to make a decision like this,
1:03:04 that they’ll feel the same way about this country and serving the country?
1:03:10 I hope so. I hope so. I don’t know. We have to be at least informed by history, if not
1:03:15 imprisoned by it. There were periods of extraordinary challenge in our history. I imagine that people in
1:03:20 the midst of those challenges thought that this was it. This was fatal. This was game over.
1:03:24 Do you believe in regression to the mean? You’re familiar with that statistical concept?
1:03:24 Yeah.
1:03:31 It sounds like you’re saying that our mean is higher than it is right now and that we should
1:03:33 regress over time. Is that your belief?
1:03:42 That is my belief. Successive generations usually are smarter, better than the one that preceded them.
1:03:48 If we can find a way to channel that effectively and make sure that the most important resource that we
1:03:54 have, our human resource, can actually fulfill itself, then I really do believe in that progress.
1:04:01 The problem is it’s not linear. It gets interrupted. It gets disrupted. Sometimes the moments of transition
1:04:06 are so difficult and so challenging that you don’t get to the other side without a major,
1:04:13 major, major problem. If we’re really off course on something, does it take a titanic moment to put us
1:04:19 back on course? That’s what worries me. And can we still navigate around the iceberg? I believe so.
1:04:21 I hope so. I know we’ve got to try.
1:04:26 I’ll let you get back to your book writing. I thank you very much, Tony. I really appreciate it.
1:04:28 Great to be with you. Thanks, Stephen.
1:04:37 That, again, was former Secretary of State Antony Blinken. This conversation made me think back to
1:04:44 something another Secretary of State once said, perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. That was
1:04:50 Colin Powell, who served under President George W. Bush. I hope both he and Blinken are right about the
1:04:57 power of optimism and the power of progress. Let us know what you thought of today’s conversation with
1:05:05 Blinken. Our email is radio at Freakonomics dot com. Coming up next time on the show, why do some
1:05:08 obsolete technologies continue to burn on?
1:05:14 I think maybe having a candle at home makes you feel like you’re still going to be OK.
1:05:21 That’s next time on the show. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else, too.
1:05:28 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast
1:05:33 app. Also at Freakonomics dot com, where we publish complete transcripts and show notes. This episode was
1:05:39 produced by Alina Coleman with help from Dalvin Abouaji. It was mixed by Eleanor Osborne with help from
1:05:45 Jeremy Johnson. And we had recording help from Thomas Tyra. The Freakonomics Radio network staff
1:05:50 also includes Augusta Chapman, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Jasmine Klinger, Gabriel Roth,
1:05:57 Greg Rippon, Morgan Levy, Sarah Lilly, Tao Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by
1:06:03 The Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening.
1:06:11 I’m so immersed in summits that I’m forgetting now where the last one was.
1:06:19 The Freakonomics Radio network, the hidden side of everything.
1:06:23 Stitcher.

0:00:02 There’s a lot nobody tells you about running a small business,
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0:00:31 Megan Rapinoe here.
0:00:35 This episode, we are riding the vibes of W All-Star.
0:00:38 We talk about our favorite moments on and off the court,
0:00:40 and we catch up with the breakout stars of The Weeknd,
0:00:42 Courtney Williams and Natisha Heidemann,
0:00:45 a.k.a. the Stud Buds.
0:00:47 Plus, we get into all the drama at the Euros.
0:00:49 Check out our latest episode of A Touch More
0:00:51 wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
0:00:57 Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G.
0:00:59 This is the part of the show where we answer questions
0:01:00 about business, big tech, entrepreneurship,
0:01:02 and whatever else is on your mind.
0:01:04 If you’d like to submit a question for next time,
0:01:05 you can send a recording, a voice recording,
0:01:08 to officehours at propgmedia.com.
0:01:11 Again, that’s officehours at propgmedia.com.
0:01:14 Or post a question on the Scott Galloway subreddit,
0:01:16 and we just might feature it in our next episode.
0:01:17 First question.
0:01:24 Our first question comes from LowDefinition31-86 on Reddit.
0:01:25 They say,
0:01:28 Scott, how do you choose which people to champion and mentor
0:01:29 beyond the people you have hired?
0:01:31 How do you make sure that at a minimum,
0:01:33 you don’t dilute your personal brand?
0:01:34 I’m grateful that 30 years ago,
0:01:36 a college alumnus gave me grace
0:01:38 when I was late to an informational interview
0:01:40 and the referral he gave me launched my career.
0:01:42 I hope I would do the same for my 22-year-old
0:01:44 neurodivergent self,
0:01:45 but I don’t know.
0:01:45 Thanks.
0:01:48 So I try to mentor at any given time
0:01:49 two to three young men.
0:01:52 One, I relate to young men.
0:01:55 Two, I believe young men especially,
0:01:56 a lot of them are struggling.
0:01:58 And three, I think I’m good at it.
0:01:59 I enjoy it.
0:02:00 I can offer good advice.
0:02:01 And by the way,
0:02:03 if you’re thinking about mentoring a young man,
0:02:04 just do it.
0:02:05 They’re everywhere.
0:02:08 Find the single mothers in your workplace
0:02:09 and just say,
0:02:11 would your son be interested in coming over,
0:02:12 washing my car,
0:02:12 going to a ballgame,
0:02:13 hanging out?
0:02:15 And you’re just going to find a lot of people
0:02:18 very willing to fort their 17-year-old
0:02:19 over to you for an afternoon.
0:02:24 And even if it’s your friends
0:02:26 who do have a male role model son,
0:02:28 I find they’re much more inclined
0:02:31 to listen to another dad.
0:02:32 I go out of the way,
0:02:33 or I go out of my way to make sure
0:02:35 my 14 and 17-year-old boys
0:02:36 spend time with other men
0:02:38 because I find the other men
0:02:39 say the same thing I’m saying,
0:02:41 but they listen to them.
0:02:42 There’s a healthy gag reflex
0:02:44 where young men are trying
0:02:45 to establish their own identity
0:02:46 and basically become allergic
0:02:47 to their parents.
0:02:48 There was an interesting article
0:02:48 in the New York Times on this,
0:02:49 and boy,
0:02:50 are we going through that right now.
0:02:51 I am fucking pollen
0:02:53 on top of cyanide
0:02:55 in terms of how my kids
0:02:57 respond to my advice right now.
0:02:58 The older one less so.
0:03:00 He’s kind of coming back to me.
0:03:01 Anyways,
0:03:02 I was at a dinner party last night,
0:03:04 and the woman next to me,
0:03:05 single mom,
0:03:06 son came over,
0:03:07 wanted to go to some party,
0:03:08 started cussing her out.
0:03:10 I wanted to stand up
0:03:12 and fucking slap this little bitch.
0:03:13 Was that wrong?
0:03:14 Anyways,
0:03:15 and she said to me,
0:03:15 she said,
0:03:17 she just sat down
0:03:18 and said it’s really difficult
0:03:19 not having a father figure
0:03:20 in his life.
0:03:20 Anyway,
0:03:23 how do I choose these kids?
0:03:24 A lot of it is just situational.
0:03:25 A friend asks,
0:03:26 somebody asks,
0:03:27 I get an email
0:03:28 that I respond to
0:03:29 or resonates with me.
0:03:31 Who I don’t mentor
0:03:32 is actually more interesting.
0:03:33 I don’t mentor kids
0:03:35 who just got out of MIT
0:03:37 and are graduating from Google
0:03:37 and want to mentor.
0:03:38 Fuck you.
0:03:39 Mentor me.
0:03:40 You should be mentoring kids.
0:03:41 You’re doing just fine.
0:03:42 By the way,
0:03:43 I’m not suggesting
0:03:44 you don’t need a kitchen cabinet,
0:03:46 but those kids don’t need help.
0:03:48 I don’t mentor kids,
0:03:49 or very few of them
0:03:51 are in or graduating from college.
0:03:52 I mentor young men
0:03:52 who, quite frankly,
0:03:53 are struggling.
0:03:54 Look,
0:03:55 the easiest thing to do
0:03:56 is your friend’s sons,
0:03:57 they’re going to listen to you
0:03:58 more than your friend
0:03:59 or the dad.
0:04:01 But mostly,
0:04:02 the kids who I try
0:04:03 and spend a little bit of time with
0:04:04 are the ones who really need help.
0:04:05 And as I was saying,
0:04:07 a lot of times,
0:04:08 I’m not afraid to call the parents
0:04:08 and say,
0:04:09 I’m not qualified to coach this kid
0:04:10 because I get the feeling
0:04:11 there’s a lot going on here.
0:04:12 I once had
0:04:14 a friend of mine
0:04:15 ask me to meet with his daughter
0:04:17 and she came over to the office
0:04:18 and she was so uncomfortable
0:04:19 in her own skin
0:04:20 and then her,
0:04:21 actually her aunt and uncle
0:04:21 showed up
0:04:23 and there was this like,
0:04:24 you could tell
0:04:25 there’s this visible release
0:04:26 of anxiety
0:04:28 and like exhale.
0:04:29 And I immediately called her dad
0:04:30 and said,
0:04:31 I can’t mentor your daughter.
0:04:32 I think she’s,
0:04:33 I’m not an adolescent psychiatrist.
0:04:34 I’m not going to diagnose her.
0:04:35 I’m just going to tell you,
0:04:37 I think she is really struggling
0:04:39 and needs professional help.
0:04:40 So,
0:04:42 the kind of the sweet spot for me
0:04:43 is a young man,
0:04:44 single mom,
0:04:46 who is struggling
0:04:47 and quite frankly,
0:04:48 just needs someone
0:04:49 to help him
0:04:51 make very basic decisions.
0:04:52 And this goes back
0:04:53 to the call out.
0:04:54 And the call out
0:04:55 is for more men
0:04:56 to get involved
0:04:57 in Big Brothers programs,
0:04:58 Big Brothers of New York
0:04:59 or whatever city you’re in.
0:05:00 there are three times
0:05:00 as many women
0:05:01 applying to be
0:05:02 big sisters in New York
0:05:03 as men.
0:05:04 And I think a lot of them
0:05:05 are intimidated
0:05:06 or they’re selfish
0:05:07 or they’re not stepping up
0:05:08 or there’s a stigma
0:05:09 to wanting to be involved
0:05:10 in a younger man’s life
0:05:11 or you think,
0:05:12 maybe I’m not a baller,
0:05:13 I’m not doing that well
0:05:14 or I don’t have my own kids,
0:05:15 who am I to help a younger?
0:05:16 I can tell you firsthand,
0:05:18 it is so easy
0:05:19 to add value.
0:05:21 These kids are just making
0:05:22 really bad decisions.
0:05:24 And it’s not that
0:05:25 they don’t get advice
0:05:26 from their mom
0:05:27 or their dad
0:05:28 on how to make
0:05:29 better decisions,
0:05:29 but they immediately
0:05:31 just have this natural
0:05:32 healthy instinct
0:05:32 not to listen.
0:05:33 Anyways,
0:05:35 very much appreciate
0:05:35 the question.
0:05:37 Our second question
0:05:38 comes from Ben
0:05:39 on Reddit.
0:05:40 He asks,
0:05:41 Prop G,
0:05:42 why is bankruptcy
0:05:44 seen a savvy financial tool
0:05:45 when used by the ultra-wealthy
0:05:46 but treated like a moral failure
0:05:47 when used by
0:05:47 working-class Americans?
0:05:49 I filed in 2017
0:05:50 when I was broken
0:05:51 on food stamps.
0:05:52 They gave me a second chance
0:05:53 and now I run a non-profit
0:05:55 called Upsolve
0:05:55 that helps others
0:05:56 do the same for free.
0:05:58 I’ve helped over 17,000
0:05:59 people file
0:06:00 and almost all of them
0:06:00 had to fight
0:06:01 an uphill battle
0:06:02 against shame
0:06:04 to make a life-changing decision.
0:06:05 It makes me wonder
0:06:06 why do we moralize
0:06:06 debt relief
0:06:07 for some
0:06:08 but not others?
0:06:09 It’s a really
0:06:10 interesting question, Ben.
0:06:13 On the whole,
0:06:14 relative to other nations,
0:06:16 we actually
0:06:19 stigmatize bankruptcy less.
0:06:20 Keep in mind,
0:06:20 many countries
0:06:22 used to have debtors’ prisons.
0:06:23 They used to put you in prison.
0:06:25 And one of the great things
0:06:25 about America
0:06:27 is we don’t embrace failure.
0:06:27 That’s bullshit,
0:06:29 but we tolerate it.
0:06:30 And bankruptcy laws
0:06:32 are an example of that.
0:06:33 You can declare bankruptcy,
0:06:34 be relieved
0:06:35 of most of your debts,
0:06:36 and kind of
0:06:36 start over.
0:06:38 And that’s a wonderful thing.
0:06:38 Now,
0:06:40 we tend to stigmatize it
0:06:41 for people much more
0:06:42 than corporations.
0:06:43 Corporations are inanimate
0:06:44 objects,
0:06:46 and when
0:06:47 iHeartRadio,
0:06:47 I think,
0:06:48 is declared
0:06:49 once,
0:06:50 or paper companies,
0:06:50 there’s also,
0:06:51 you know,
0:06:52 two of the three
0:06:53 automobile companies
0:06:54 declared bankruptcy.
0:06:55 We assume it’s not their fault.
0:06:56 We don’t hold them
0:06:57 personally accountable.
0:06:58 Also,
0:06:59 it’s a fantastic,
0:07:01 it’s a fantastic construct,
0:07:03 because sometimes companies
0:07:03 borrow too much money
0:07:04 or make bad decisions,
0:07:06 and they’re decent companies,
0:07:08 they just have bad balance sheets
0:07:10 or debt structure,
0:07:11 meaning they have taken on
0:07:12 too much debt for projects
0:07:13 that just didn’t work out.
0:07:14 And bankruptcy gives them
0:07:15 the cloud cover
0:07:16 to reorganize,
0:07:18 forgive them of their debts,
0:07:19 equitize their debt.
0:07:20 Their debt goes,
0:07:21 turns into equities
0:07:22 such that maybe the debtors
0:07:23 get some,
0:07:25 some of their investment back.
0:07:26 And basically,
0:07:27 the equity holders
0:07:29 who usually get more upside
0:07:30 when things are good
0:07:31 get wiped out,
0:07:32 but they might say,
0:07:32 okay,
0:07:33 if you’re,
0:07:33 like,
0:07:35 retailers are great companies
0:07:35 to take bankrupt.
0:07:36 Basically,
0:07:37 you could go through,
0:07:38 if they declare chapter 11,
0:07:39 you can go through
0:07:41 another 500 stores,
0:07:43 you can pick the 200 that work,
0:07:44 and you get out of the 300 leases.
0:07:46 You get to liquidate
0:07:47 or absolve your obligation
0:07:48 to those 300 leases.
0:07:49 And in retail,
0:07:50 leases are usually
0:07:51 what kills a company
0:07:52 or specifically bad leases
0:07:53 or stores that aren’t paying off.
0:07:55 So it gives the company,
0:07:56 it recognizes the company
0:07:57 may still have value
0:07:58 that people,
0:07:59 you know,
0:08:00 can get employment from
0:08:00 or shareholders
0:08:01 or debt holders
0:08:02 can get their money back from
0:08:03 or more money.
0:08:05 And it’s a fantastic means
0:08:07 of bringing new life
0:08:08 to a company.
0:08:09 My best investments
0:08:10 have been,
0:08:11 my two best investments
0:08:12 have been
0:08:13 corporations or investors
0:08:14 bringing a company
0:08:15 out of bankruptcy,
0:08:18 washing out the debtors,
0:08:20 washing out 100%
0:08:21 the equity holders,
0:08:22 turning some of the debt
0:08:23 into equity
0:08:24 and then putting new capital
0:08:24 into the company
0:08:25 and then using that
0:08:26 cloud cover of bankruptcy
0:08:28 to create a healthier,
0:08:29 leaner company.
0:08:30 One was a Yellow Pages company
0:08:31 called Dex Media.
0:08:33 The other was a consumer company
0:08:34 called Enjoy.
0:08:35 Those have been my two biggest,
0:08:36 two best investments.
0:08:38 If there was one asset class,
0:08:39 I would say
0:08:41 is the best investment,
0:08:43 it’s distress credit.
0:08:44 And that is going into companies
0:08:44 that are struggling.
0:08:46 Anyways,
0:08:47 another talk show.
0:08:49 But we do stigmatize it
0:08:50 for individuals.
0:08:51 And I think credit card companies
0:08:52 are now trying to pass
0:08:53 types of legislation
0:08:54 that make it harder
0:08:55 for people to be absolved
0:08:57 of their credit card debt.
0:08:58 And the most immoral
0:09:00 component of this
0:09:01 is that student debt
0:09:02 is not dischargeable
0:09:02 in bankruptcy,
0:09:03 meaning a kid
0:09:04 maybe comes from
0:09:05 middle-class families,
0:09:06 told they need to go to college,
0:09:07 goes to college
0:09:08 for two or three years,
0:09:09 racks up six figures in debt,
0:09:11 decides college
0:09:11 is not for him or her,
0:09:12 drops out,
0:09:13 and still has that debt
0:09:14 with no degree
0:09:15 and no ability
0:09:17 to kind of pay it back.
0:09:18 That is the real,
0:09:18 I mean,
0:09:19 you want to talk about
0:09:19 kind of like,
0:09:20 you know,
0:09:20 fucked at 22.
0:09:22 That’s the scenario.
0:09:23 And it’s just insane
0:09:25 that the one cohort
0:09:25 that should be,
0:09:27 we should have the most grace
0:09:28 and the most forgiveness for
0:09:29 is the one we decide
0:09:30 that the primary debt
0:09:32 they deploy
0:09:33 or there’s leveled on them,
0:09:34 student debt,
0:09:35 is not dischargeable.
0:09:36 So this is,
0:09:37 this is the lobbyists
0:09:39 from credit card companies
0:09:39 and from banks
0:09:41 deciding that student debt
0:09:44 should not be dischargeable.
0:09:45 So I applaud
0:09:45 what you’re doing.
0:09:46 I think bankruptcy,
0:09:48 there should be
0:09:49 some stigma to it.
0:09:49 You don’t want people
0:09:51 doing it over and over.
0:09:55 I think in the corporate world,
0:09:55 bankruptcy,
0:09:56 I think those laws
0:09:58 are actually really powerful.
0:09:59 I mean,
0:10:00 powerful in a good way,
0:10:00 a positive way.
0:10:02 The president is known
0:10:02 for bankrupting
0:10:04 several of his own companies.
0:10:05 After you do that,
0:10:06 it gets harder and harder
0:10:07 to borrow money.
0:10:08 He was always able to do that.
0:10:09 He was always able
0:10:09 to borrow more money
0:10:10 and kind of leave
0:10:11 a lot of banks
0:10:13 holding the bill.
0:10:13 To be clear,
0:10:14 he’s never declared
0:10:15 personal bankruptcy.
0:10:16 So you’re right,
0:10:17 we do stigmatize it more
0:10:18 for individuals
0:10:19 than we do
0:10:20 for corporations,
0:10:21 but I do think
0:10:22 our bankruptcy laws
0:10:22 are a feature,
0:10:23 not a bug,
0:10:24 of our country,
0:10:24 and that is
0:10:25 there is less stigma.
0:10:27 And generally speaking,
0:10:27 that’s true
0:10:29 of our entire approach
0:10:30 to risk.
0:10:31 We’re much more
0:10:31 risk-aggressive.
0:10:32 I’ve started several companies,
0:10:33 some have worked,
0:10:34 some have not,
0:10:34 and I wonder
0:10:35 if I’d been in Europe
0:10:36 and an entrepreneur
0:10:37 and my first company
0:10:37 had failed,
0:10:38 if I’d ever would have
0:10:38 been able to raise
0:10:39 subsequent capital.
0:10:40 So bankruptcy
0:10:41 and our willingness
0:10:43 to forgive and move on
0:10:44 are key components
0:10:45 of what makes
0:10:47 America unique
0:10:48 and more prosperous
0:10:49 and able to attract
0:10:50 more capital
0:10:52 and more human capital
0:10:53 that’s willing to take
0:10:54 outsized risks
0:10:55 knowing that if it doesn’t work,
0:10:56 it’s not the end of the world.
0:10:57 Thanks for the question.
0:10:59 We’ll be right back
0:11:00 after a quick break.
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0:12:13 Hey, this is Peter Kafka,
0:12:14 the host of Channels,
0:12:16 a show about media and tech
0:12:16 and what happens
0:12:17 when they collide.
0:12:19 And this may be hard to remember,
0:12:21 but not very long ago,
0:12:23 magazines were a really big deal.
0:12:25 And the most important magazines
0:12:26 were owned by Condé Nast,
0:12:28 the glitzy publishing empire
0:12:30 that’s the focus of a new book
0:12:31 by New York Times reporter
0:12:32 Michael Grinbaum.
0:12:34 The way Condé Nast elevated
0:12:34 its editors,
0:12:36 the way they paid
0:12:37 for their mortgages
0:12:37 so they could live
0:12:38 in beautiful homes,
0:12:40 there was a logic to it,
0:12:42 which was that Condé Nast
0:12:44 itself became seen
0:12:46 as this kind of enchanted land.
0:12:47 You can hear the rest
0:12:48 of our chat on channels
0:12:49 wherever you listen
0:12:50 to your favorite
0:12:51 media podcast.
0:12:55 This week on Network and Chill,
0:12:56 I’m joined by Dan Rossi,
0:12:57 the hot dog king
0:12:58 of New York City
0:12:59 and the owner
0:13:00 of the most iconic
0:13:02 hot dog cart of all time.
0:13:04 From starting with a single cart
0:13:05 and a dream
0:13:06 to building up
0:13:07 a multi-million dollar empire
0:13:09 that dominated street corners
0:13:10 across Manhattan,
0:13:11 Dan’s story takes
0:13:12 an unexpected turn
0:13:14 when it all came crashing down.
0:13:15 Dan opens up
0:13:16 about the highs
0:13:17 of feeding thousands
0:13:18 of hungry New Yorkers daily,
0:13:20 the challenges of scaling
0:13:21 a street food business,
0:13:23 the mistakes that cost him
0:13:23 everything
0:13:25 and what he’s learned
0:13:26 about resilience,
0:13:26 failure,
0:13:27 and starting over.
0:13:29 What happened was
0:13:33 they took all the disabled vets
0:13:34 that were selling merchandise,
0:13:35 you know,
0:13:35 to see the guys
0:13:36 with the hats and stuff
0:13:37 and they kicked them
0:13:37 out of Midtown Manhattan.
0:13:38 Why?
0:13:39 You want me to name politics?
0:13:40 Yeah, let’s name.
0:13:41 Donald Trump?
0:13:42 He kicked every vet
0:13:43 out of Midtown Manhattan
0:13:44 by buying off
0:13:45 all the politicians
0:13:46 in Albany.
0:13:47 Listen wherever
0:13:48 you get your podcasts
0:13:49 or watch on
0:13:50 youtube.com
0:13:51 slash yourrichbff.
0:13:53 Welcome back
0:13:54 onto our final question
0:13:55 from Miami Peter
0:13:56 on Reddit.
0:13:58 Scott,
0:13:58 make the argument
0:14:00 for never getting married
0:14:01 and never having children.
0:14:05 Just come spend this afternoon
0:14:06 with me and my boys
0:14:07 and I’ll make the argument
0:14:08 for you.
0:14:10 I’m not one of these people
0:14:10 that thinks you have
0:14:11 to get married
0:14:12 and have kids
0:14:12 to be happy.
0:14:14 I just don’t think that.
0:14:16 Especially the having kids part.
0:14:18 I didn’t want kids.
0:14:19 I liked my life.
0:14:20 I recognized
0:14:20 I was self-aware enough
0:14:21 to know that I’m pretty selfish
0:14:23 and like to have my own weekends
0:14:23 and I like to spend
0:14:24 a lot of time alone.
0:14:25 That hasn’t changed.
0:14:28 And then something strange
0:14:29 happens when you have kids.
0:14:31 God reaches into your soul
0:14:32 and turns on a switch
0:14:33 and you just kind of
0:14:34 are in love with these things.
0:14:35 Although the switch
0:14:36 is more like a dimmer.
0:14:37 I fell in love with my kids.
0:14:38 I didn’t feel love right away
0:14:40 when I came marching out.
0:14:41 But I do think
0:14:42 that it gives you
0:14:43 a certain sense of permanence.
0:14:44 You wanted me to make
0:14:45 an argument
0:14:46 for not having kids.
0:14:46 Simple.
0:14:49 Look at gay people.
0:14:50 Typically gay marriages
0:14:51 don’t have as many kids
0:14:52 and it seems to work
0:14:53 really well for them.
0:14:54 When they have
0:14:55 more disposable income
0:14:56 and more time for each other
0:14:57 and more time for themselves
0:14:58 which creates
0:14:59 an absence of stress
0:15:01 and more healthy relationships
0:15:02 and more self-care.
0:15:04 I wonder if gay people
0:15:05 live longer
0:15:07 and just have
0:15:08 more disposable income
0:15:10 because they’re not taxed
0:15:12 with kids
0:15:13 or with this
0:15:14 preconceived notion
0:15:15 of what monogamy
0:15:16 is supposed to be.
0:15:19 So I would say that
0:15:19 if you decide
0:15:20 at some point
0:15:22 you know
0:15:23 you’re just not up
0:15:24 for don’t want to have kids
0:15:25 I probably would not be married
0:15:26 if I didn’t
0:15:27 if I decided not to have kids.
0:15:28 I was
0:15:28 I don’t want to say
0:15:29 I was forced to get married
0:15:30 but basically my partner
0:15:31 and this is
0:15:32 their right said
0:15:34 if you don’t want to have kids
0:15:34 I’m out of here
0:15:35 and I’m like
0:15:35 okay I’ll have kids.
0:15:38 And now I love it
0:15:39 it’s given me purpose.
0:15:41 Notice how I had to add that in
0:15:42 for orthodoxy
0:15:43 and virtue signaling.
0:15:44 What I would say
0:15:45 I don’t know
0:15:47 if you’re a dude
0:15:48 Miami Peter
0:15:50 look Miami Peter
0:15:51 what I would tell you
0:15:52 is that
0:15:53 the statistics show
0:15:54 that people live longer
0:15:56 are happier
0:15:57 are more productive citizens
0:15:59 build more wealth
0:16:01 when they’re in a relationship
0:16:03 and that
0:16:03 I can say
0:16:04 I don’t know
0:16:05 that many
0:16:06 super successful
0:16:07 super happy people
0:16:08 who kind of
0:16:09 die alone.
0:16:10 I just don’t
0:16:12 I think it’s fun
0:16:13 to build your life
0:16:13 with somebody
0:16:15 up until
0:16:16 when my mom died
0:16:17 I needed to call her
0:16:18 every time something good
0:16:18 happened such that
0:16:19 it was cemented
0:16:20 and now
0:16:21 I share those victories
0:16:22 with my partner
0:16:23 and my kids
0:16:24 because at the end of the day
0:16:25 what you want
0:16:25 and what you need
0:16:26 as a mammal
0:16:26 is you want
0:16:28 you want someone
0:16:29 to notice your life
0:16:30 you want someone
0:16:31 to witness you
0:16:32 you want someone
0:16:34 to share in your victories
0:16:35 you want to build
0:16:36 something with someone
0:16:37 even one of my
0:16:38 one of the guys
0:16:39 I co-invest with
0:16:40 we had a really
0:16:41 an investment workout
0:16:42 really well
0:16:42 and he said
0:16:43 it’s so much more fun
0:16:44 to make money
0:16:44 with your friends
0:16:47 it’s so much more fun
0:16:48 it’s so much more rewarding
0:16:49 to build your life
0:16:50 with someone
0:16:51 in addition
0:16:53 there’s a certain reward
0:16:53 and satisfaction
0:16:54 that you’re here
0:16:55 for a reason
0:16:56 when you’re able
0:16:58 to take your intelligence
0:16:58 and your grit
0:17:00 and your blessings
0:17:02 and help take care
0:17:02 of others
0:17:03 especially kids
0:17:04 because they are
0:17:05 just so vulnerable
0:17:06 and so dependent
0:17:07 upon you
0:17:07 that it gives you
0:17:08 a certain sense
0:17:09 of strength
0:17:10 and masculinity
0:17:11 and pride
0:17:12 so yeah
0:17:14 can you have a nice life
0:17:15 without kids
0:17:16 absolutely
0:17:17 can you have a nice life
0:17:18 without kids
0:17:19 or getting married
0:17:20 you can have a series
0:17:21 of relationships
0:17:22 but I would argue
0:17:24 on a risk adjusted basis
0:17:26 boss
0:17:26 there’s a reason
0:17:28 why most cultures
0:17:29 still have
0:17:30 the ultimate goal
0:17:31 is to have a family
0:17:32 and in general
0:17:33 most people
0:17:33 or most studies
0:17:34 have shown
0:17:35 that you would be happier
0:17:36 having said that
0:17:37 if you want to
0:17:38 roll us some time
0:17:38 in London
0:17:40 or grab a beer
0:17:41 I’m always up
0:17:42 for being single
0:17:43 for at least a night
0:17:44 or two a week
0:17:44 anyways
0:17:45 thanks for the question
0:17:49 that’s all for this episode
0:17:50 if you’d like
0:17:50 to submit a question
0:17:51 please email
0:17:52 a voice recording
0:17:52 to officehours
0:17:54 of profgmedia.com
0:17:54 again that’s
0:17:55 officehours
0:17:56 of profgmedia.com
0:17:57 or if you prefer
0:17:58 to ask on reddit
0:17:59 just post your question
0:18:00 on the Scott Galloway
0:18:00 subreddit
0:18:01 and we just might
0:18:01 feature it
0:18:02 in an upcoming episode
0:18:05 you

0:00:09 You wrote one of the most iconic, well-known books about dopamine, which propelled the subject
0:00:14 matter of dopamine into the public consciousness. But I guess the most important question I should
0:00:22 ask you is, why does dopamine matter? Ah, good question. Good, good place to start.
0:00:29 I mean, dopamine matters because it’s fundamental to our survival, right? So it’s the chemical that
0:00:35 we make in our brain that tells us this is something we should approach, explore, investigate.
0:00:41 So it’s really almost the survival chemical. So what is dopamine? If you had to explain it
0:00:47 to a 10-year-old, how would you go about explaining it? So dopamine is a chemical that we make in our
0:00:56 brain. It has many different functions, but one of its most important functions is that it helps us
0:01:04 experience pleasure, reward, and motivation. It may be even more important for the motivation to do
0:01:11 things than it is for the pleasure itself. So for example, there’s a very famous experiment in which
0:01:18 rats were engineered to have no dopamine in the brain’s reward pathway. And the scientists discovered
0:01:23 that if they put food in the rat’s mouth, the rat would eat the food, would seem to get some pleasure
0:01:28 from the food, if you can determine that from watching a rat eat, which I think they felt like
0:01:34 they could. But if you put the food even a body length away, the rat will starve to death.
0:01:42 The idea being that without dopamine, we’re not motivated to seek out the things that we need for our basic
0:01:50 survival. That’s crazy. So you get a rat, you put the food an inch from its mouth, and it will starve to
0:01:54 death because it doesn’t have dopamine, the dopamine required to just reach out and eat.
0:01:58 Yeah, essentially. Maybe it’s not an inch, maybe it’s a little more than an inch. But the idea being
0:02:06 that dopamine is necessary to be motivated to do the work to get the thing that we need.
0:02:13 And having an understanding of dopamine, how might that improve my life?
0:02:20 Having a basic understanding of how dopamine works, how we process pleasure and pain, and also what happens
0:02:28 with dopamine as we go from adaptive recreational use to maladaptive addictive use is something that is
0:02:34 really useful, especially for those of us living in the modern world, where now we’re exposed to so many
0:02:39 reinforcing substances and behaviors that we’ve all become vulnerable to the problem of addiction.
0:02:45 And what are the biggest misconceptions on the subject of dopamine? Because it’s kind of thrown around
0:02:49 in society. I see it in my group chats, people saying, I need more dopamine or whatever, or,
0:02:53 you know, that person just craves dopamine. What are the biggest misconceptions you’ve come across?
0:03:00 The main misconception is that somehow we can get addicted to dopamine. We’re not getting addicted
0:03:07 to dopamine itself. Dopamine is neither good nor bad. It’s a signal to tell us whether or not
0:03:15 something that we’re doing is potentially useful for our survival. And also, it’s related to what we
0:03:23 predicted about how rewarding or pleasurable something would be. And so it’s really, you know, I sort of,
0:03:30 sometimes I joke it’s like the reward theory of relativity, dopamine is, in the sense that pleasure and
0:03:37 pain really are truly relative to one another. And so dopamine gives us information about where we are
0:03:40 in that relativity scale between pleasure and pain.
0:03:45 And when you say relative, you mean, I mean, it’s quite fitting for anyone that can’t see, we have a
0:03:49 set of scales on the table. And scales are relative to each other, because if you pour in one end,
0:03:54 the other end goes up. And if you pour in the other end, the other end goes up and this end goes down.
0:03:57 And when you say relative, that’s what you’re describing, right?
0:03:59 Yes, that’s what that’s what I’m describing. Yes.
0:04:05 Okay. And what activities that I do every day have an impact on my dopamine?
0:04:13 Well, probably almost everything, you know, in some ways. I mean, every time we are doing something
0:04:21 that’s pleasurable, reinforcing, rewarding, that will affect dopamine. It’s really the primary signal
0:04:26 that lets us know that this thing is potentially important for our survival, as I mentioned.
0:04:33 But, you know, even aversive stimuli can trigger dopamine.
0:04:34 What’s aversive?
0:04:41 Oh, something that’s painful or not pleasurable. Dopamine gets involved in that equation. Anything
0:04:48 that’s novel or new is something that triggers our dopamine in our reward pathway. Dopamine is
0:04:55 fundamental for movement. So not just pleasure and reward, but also movement. So for example,
0:05:03 Parkinson’s disease, which is a disease related to stiffness and tremor is caused by a depletion
0:05:09 of dopamine in a part of the brain called the substantia nigra. And as dopamine gets depleted
0:05:15 in that part of the brain, people lose the ability to move their bodies. And it’s probably no coincidence
0:05:21 that the same neurotransmitter that is so important for pleasure, reward, motivation is also really
0:05:28 important for movement because most organisms have to locomote toward the object of their desire.
0:05:33 We want that thing, we have to exert effort, right? We have to put in the work to go get it.
0:05:39 But in the world today, we really don’t have to do that, right? We can swipe right, we can swipe left,
0:05:45 and all of a sudden it magically appears at the touch of a finger. And that’s very confusing for our brains,
0:05:52 because that’s not how we evolved. We really evolved for having to do quite a bit of upfront work
0:05:54 for a tiny little bit of reward.
0:05:59 I just want to, before we move on, talk about this point you said, because I think it’s quite
0:06:02 foundational to everything we’re going to talk about, about dopamine being relative to pain.
0:06:10 And I have this set of scales in front of me. And here I have some chemicals that are likely to
0:06:16 produce dopamine in my brain, I believe, right? So alcohol. I have some rum, I have some whiskey,
0:06:21 I have some vodka. And can you explain to me, using this rum, whiskey, and vodka,
0:06:25 how dopamine is relative to pain and what’s going on in my brain?
0:06:26 Sure.
0:06:27 Okay, I’ll slide this over to you.
0:06:36 Okay. So one of the most exciting findings in neuroscience in the past 75 years is that
0:06:42 pleasure and pain are co-located in the brain. So the same parts of the brain that process pleasure
0:06:50 also process pain. And in a very simple reductionist kind of way, they work like opposite sides of a
0:06:56 balance. So imagine that deep in your brain’s reward pathway, which is another exciting discovery,
0:07:01 right? That there’s this dedicated reward pathway of the brain that consists, broadly speaking,
0:07:06 of the prefrontal cortex, which is this large gray matter area right behind our foreheads that’s so
0:07:13 important for future planning, for delayed gratification, for appreciating future consequences.
0:07:18 You might think of it as like the brakes on the car, if we’re going to analogize to an engine.
0:07:25 And then deep, you know, in the brain, we’ve got what we call the limbic areas or the emotion brain.
0:07:32 And there you have the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area that are rich in dopamine
0:07:38 releasing neurons, right? And they act like the accelerator on the car. So when you’ve got a
0:07:44 healthy functioning brain, you’ve got enough accelerator, but not too much, right? So enough
0:07:49 dopamine being released, but not too much. And you’ve got a healthy prefrontal cortex putting
0:07:57 the brakes on that dopamine release. When people become addicted, there’s either a problem with the
0:08:03 brakes, the prefrontal cortex, or the accelerator, the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area,
0:08:09 or both, right? What we’re finding is that there’s actually a disconnect. So there are large
0:08:15 neuronal circuits and pathways between those deep limbic structures and the prefrontal cortex that
0:08:22 literally get severed or disconnected when people become addicted. As we think about pleasure and pain
0:08:27 being co-located in the same parts of the brain, working like opposite sides of the balance,
0:08:33 in order to understand what happens in the addicted brain is to appreciate that there are
0:08:39 fundamental rules governing this balance. And one of the most important rules is that the balance wants
0:08:46 to remain level. It does not want to be tilted very long to the side of either pleasure or pain. And in
0:08:52 fact, what our brain does is first tilt an equal and opposite amount to whatever the initial stimulus is. So I’m
0:08:58 going to try to illustrate that here. So let’s say our initial stimulus is alcohol. Now, alcohol works through
0:09:05 its own chemical pathway. It works on our endogenous opioid system, the opioids that we make. We have receptors
0:09:11 for opioids in our brains. It works on our endogenous GABA system, which is our calming neurotransmitter. And at
0:09:18 the end of the day, it releases dopamine in the reward pathway. So any potentially addictive substance
0:09:24 will release dopamine in the reward pathway. The more that’s released and the faster that’s released
0:09:29 in a given individual, the more likely that substance is to be addictive.
0:09:35 Now, another important concept here is what we call drug of choice, which is to say what releases a lot of
0:09:41 dopamine in your brain may not release a lot of dopamine in my brain and vice versa, right? Which is
0:09:45 this idea that people have predilections to different kinds of drugs. And by the way,
0:09:49 people can get addicted to behaviors too. I should emphasize that.
0:09:56 When you say drug of choice, you mean the brain has a particular sensitivity to that
0:09:57 drug in terms of dopamine?
0:10:03 Yes. The more dopamine that’s released, the faster that it’s released, the more likely that drug is to
0:10:07 be addictive for a given individual. So you’re holding some whiskey there.
0:10:08 I’m holding some whiskey.
0:10:13 There could be a brain that is very sensitive to whiskey, and there could be a different brain that
0:10:17 you could pour all the whiskey and you like and the dopamine response is sort of limited.
0:10:25 Exactly. And for many of my patients who become addicted to alcohol, they will tell you that from
0:10:31 the first moment they had alcohol, they knew they were either in trouble or had met their best friend
0:10:38 or some combination. It was a very potent experience for them. All right. So let’s go ahead and put this
0:10:44 on the pleasure side of the balance. Dopamine is being released, but no sooner has that happened,
0:10:50 then my brain will work very hard to restore a level balance. And by the way, a level balance is what
0:10:56 neuroscientists call homeostasis, okay? And one of the overarching physiologic drives for all living
0:11:04 organisms is to return to homeostasis. Homeostasis is that parameter of what’s often called affordances
0:11:10 or states of being that are adaptive and healthy for the organism. For example, like we have a certain
0:11:17 homeostasis of body temperature. And if we go much beyond that, either too high or too low,
0:11:24 we will disintegrate and die, right? So homeostasis is that states of being that are compatible with
0:11:28 existence and potentially advantageous too. Sort of baseline level.
0:11:29 That’s right. Okay.
0:11:33 Yeah, baseline level. And by the way, we’re always releasing dopamine at a kind of tonic baseline
0:11:36 level in our brains. I sometimes think of it as the heartbeat of the brain.
0:11:39 So what’s happened here for people that can’t see is you poured a little bit of whiskey into
0:11:44 one end of the scale, the pleasure side of the scale, and the other side of the scale has risen,
0:11:49 because now there’s whiskey in the pleasure side, which I guess has released dopamine?
0:11:53 Exactly. So now we’ve released dopamine in the reward pathway.
0:11:57 Okay. Because the pain side went up, does that mean there’s now less pain in the brain?
0:12:03 Well, I think, you know, again, this is a metaphor. It’s an oversimplification. The idea here is just
0:12:08 when we press on the pleasure side, we’re releasing dopamine in the reward pathway and experiencing
0:12:09 pleasure. Okay.
0:12:16 But no sooner has that happened than our brain will try to compensate or adapt to increased
0:12:22 dopamine firing by down-regulating dopamine transmission, for example, by involuting
0:12:24 post-synaptic dopamine receptors. What does that mean?
0:12:33 Okay. Okay. So our brain is a bunch of wires, you know, that conduct these electrical signals. And
0:12:39 these long spindly cells are called neurons. And the thing about neurons is that they don’t actually touch
0:12:43 end to end. There’s a little gap or space between them. And that gap is called the synapse.
0:12:49 And that gap or synapse is bridged by what we call neurotransmitters. And dopamine is one of
0:12:56 those neurotransmitters. Okay. And when the presynaptic neuron pulses and releases dopamine,
0:13:03 it crosses the synapse and binds to a receptor on the post-synaptic neuron, which either continues
0:13:06 or aborts that electrical signal. Does that make sense?
0:13:06 Yes.
0:13:13 Okay. So one of the ways that our brain can decrease the effects of dopamine, decrease
0:13:20 dopamine transmission, is by involuting or taking inside the neuron the post-synaptic receptor.
0:13:23 That way, when dopamine is released, it has nowhere to bind.
0:13:25 Oh, okay. So it’s like removing the docking station.
0:13:30 Exactly. Very good. It’s removing the docking station. So essentially, getting back to our
0:13:36 scale, we’ve, you know, ingested alcohol, we’ve increased dopamine firing in the reward pathway.
0:13:41 But remember, our pleasure-pain balance wants to return to a level position, level with the ground,
0:13:48 homeostasis. So it’s going to decrease dopamine transmission by, for example, involuting those
0:13:54 post-synaptic dopamine receptors. But one thing about the brain in its process of trying to get
0:13:59 back to homeostasis, and again, I like to think of this neuroadaptation process as these gremlins
0:14:04 hopping on the pain side of the balance to bring it level again. You don’t have gremlins here,
0:14:08 here you have these little rocks, but let’s go ahead and put a rock on the pain side of the balance.
0:14:13 And these rocks are our friends, right? Their job is to level the balance, because remember,
0:14:16 we’ve got to go back to homeostasis. So I’m going to put a rock on, and you’re going to say,
0:14:23 “Oh my gosh, it overshot,” right? Now, I’ve got it pressed down on the pain side of the balance.
0:14:29 But that’s exactly what happens in our brains. In this process of neuroadaptation,
0:14:33 those gremlins hopping on the pain side of the balance don’t get off as soon as the balance is level.
0:14:37 They stay on until we’re tilted an equal and opposite amount.
0:14:42 So is that what a hangover is, or a come down? As they would say when people take drugs,
0:14:44 they say, “I have a come down.”
0:14:50 Exactly. That’s exactly what it is. That’s the hangover, the come down, the blue Monday,
0:14:56 or on a much smaller scale, just that moment of craving, right? That moment of wanting to have
0:14:57 one more shot, right?
0:15:00 Why does it overshoot? Why can’t it just perfectly hit homeostasis?
0:15:02 Such a great question.
0:15:03 Because then we’d feel fine.
0:15:06 Yeah. Why did Mother Nature do that to us?
0:15:08 So cruel, right?
0:15:08 Yeah.
0:15:14 Okay. I’m going to tell you an evolutionary just-so story. What we mean by that is we don’t
0:15:21 really know why, you know, this mechanism exists. But from an evolutionary perspective,
0:15:27 if you’re living in a world of scarcity and ever-present danger, this is the perfect mechanism
0:15:33 to make sure that we’re never satisfied with what we have, that we’re always wanting more.
0:15:36 It’s made us the ultimate seekers.
0:15:42 Okay. Because immediately after getting something, I’m now feeling a lack of pleasure,
0:15:46 and I’m at a deficit, you know, on the pain side of the scale, which means that I’m going to go seeking
0:15:52 out more dopamine. And in a world where everything is quite scarce, that could mean going on another
0:15:55 four-hour hunt the next day to go kill a gazelle or something.
0:15:56 Perfect.
0:15:57 Perfect. You’ve got it, yeah.
0:15:57 You’ve got it perfectly.
0:15:58 Okay. Interesting.
0:15:58 Yeah.
0:16:05 Okay. So that’s going to motivate me because this gets so, but Jesus, people that have hangovers
0:16:06 don’t seem very motivated.
0:16:17 Right. So now that’s it. So why is that, right? It’s because alcohol is a product of human engineering
0:16:25 that releases so much dopamine all at once in the reward pathway that our brains are reeling to
0:16:33 compensate, right? We really weren’t evolved for this much pleasure with this much easy access.
0:16:41 As you said yourself, we were really evolved to have to do quite a lot of work upfront and to be hungry
0:16:47 and to be lonely and to be tired and then get a little bit of reward that would then bring us back
0:16:53 up to homeostasis. So really, we were evolved to be pressing on the pain side of the balance in our
0:16:59 effort to find pleasure. And then when we find it, that little bit of food or clothing or shelter or a
0:17:02 mate would bring us back to the level of position. Does that make sense?
0:17:09 Yeah. So you’re telling me essentially that we’re all wired to be addicted because if this is how our
0:17:16 brain works in a world, it’s designed to seek out more dopamine. But the problem we have now is we have
0:17:22 all this synthetic dopamine effectively, like this synthetic chemicals and synthetic things and, you know,
0:17:28 an internet that is wiring us to give us so much dopamine so easily. That means that our brains are
0:17:33 effectively like mismatched to the world that we live in and therefore wired to be addicted. Yeah,
0:17:37 I think you actually said that. I found a quote you said in an interview where you said,
0:17:41 we’re all wired to be addicted. And if you’re not addicted yet, it’s right around the corner.
0:17:49 Right. Coming to a website near you. Yes. I guess I would qualify that a little bit by saying we’re
0:17:55 wired for survival in a world of scarcity. That’s not the world we live in now. We live in a world of
0:18:01 overwhelming overabundance. And so there is a mismatch between this ancient wiring that has us
0:18:09 relentlessly pursuing pleasure in order to survive and a world that’s so infused with pleasure and so many
0:18:15 rewarding stimuli that now we’re overwhelming our reward system and our brains are reeling in response
0:18:20 to try to compensate. So what happens to this scale then in such a world where I can get a big hit of
0:18:26 dopamine all the time using some of these synthetic things or the internet or pornography or whatever
0:18:30 else? What’s going on with this scale over and over again? Okay, great. So let me get there.
0:18:35 Let me first say, though, that remember, after we do something that’s highly pleasurable, our brain
0:18:42 compensates with neuroadaptation, tilting an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain, and then
0:18:48 restoring our balance back to the level position, right, or what we call homeostasis. So this doesn’t
0:18:54 last forever, right? It’s to pleasure, then it’s to pain, then it’s back to the level position. But if we
0:19:01 continue to consume our drug of choice over days to weeks to months to years, and we add in a whole
0:19:11 bunch of other drugs, and now we’re consuming, you know, pornography and smoking pot and eating donuts
0:19:18 and, you know, you name it all at the same time, then essentially what happens is those gremlins on
0:19:22 the pain side of the balance end up camped out there.
0:19:27 For anyone that can’t see, she put all of the rocks into the pain side to represent all of the
0:19:31 addictive behaviors that this individual has now taken on.
0:19:39 Right. And now we’ve entered addicted brain, by which I mean that we’ve changed our hedonic
0:19:49 or joy set point to the side of pain. Now we need more and more of our drug in more potent forms,
0:19:55 not to get high and feel good, but just to level the balance and feel normal. And this is not going
0:20:00 to be enough. To level the balance, I would have to like keep filling this much more than this
0:20:06 container can hold. And that would be in pursuit really of just trying to level that balance so
0:20:11 that we can feel normal. And when we’re not using, we’re walking around with a balance tilted toward the
0:20:18 side of pain, experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance or behavior,
0:20:24 which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression and craving.
0:20:30 So if I managed to get enough vodka, whiskey, rum, and pour it into the pleasure side of the scale,
0:20:34 now that all the rocks are in the pain side of the scale, I managed to outweigh it,
0:20:37 it would, it would, what would then happen?
0:20:38 More rocks.
0:20:40 More rocks would be added.
0:20:41 Yes, more rocks.
0:20:45 So momentarily, I would maybe be in a little bit of pleasure.
0:20:45 Yes.
0:20:49 But then my brain would remove those docking stations again, remove more of them,
0:20:54 and more rocks would go in and I’d slam down on the pain side again, which means I need more
0:21:01 alcohol to try and get up to pleasure. Okay. So really you want to, you want to like dopamine
0:21:06 fast or you need, you need to just balance this. And this is so difficult because of the world we
0:21:10 live in. It’s almost, it’s, it’s, it’s funnily enough, because this little scales experiment
0:21:14 analogy here has given me a huge amount of empathy for people that are addicts.
0:21:21 Oh gosh, I’m so glad you said that because I think that is the key to empathy for the disease of
0:21:27 addiction, as well as for people with the disease having empathy for themselves, is recognizing that
0:21:34 on some level, it, it’s, it’s out of their control, right? Because when we are tilted to the side of pain,
0:21:41 the overwhelming drive to restore a level balance or restore homeostasis as quickly as possible,
0:21:48 overwhelms any other rational thought about the consequences of my drug use, right? It’s just like,
0:21:53 get back to the level position because if I do that, I’ll at least feel temporarily better.
0:21:59 What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want
0:22:08 to listen to that full episode, I’ve linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.

0:00:08 I have felt like a little bit of a pinch me moment where I’ve realized a little pinch me.
0:00:10 Don’t say that one.
0:00:11 Pinch me.
0:00:15 I will pinch you if you ever say that again.
0:00:16 And I’ll just say, ow.
0:00:29 What’s going on over there?
0:00:30 What has been going on?
0:00:35 We haven’t seen each other in seven days, and we’ve both talked to a bunch of interesting people.
0:00:37 Have you enjoyed your time away?
0:00:38 I have.
0:00:42 By the way, people are like, why do they do these separate?
0:00:44 And it’s like, dude, we live on the other side of the country.
0:00:45 I live in California.
0:00:47 Sam lives on the far east coast.
0:00:54 And so for us to do an in-person recording, it’s like, hey, would you like to fly across the country for this day, today, just to record this podcast?
0:00:56 And both of us have little kids.
0:00:57 Neither of us want to do that.
0:01:00 So if you see us doing one-on-one interviews with people, don’t worry.
0:01:01 Me and Sam are still good.
0:01:03 We just, we live really far apart.
0:01:05 Okay, so here’s the deal.
0:01:11 In the last 10 days, both you and I have gone and done podcasts that have not come out yet.
0:01:15 I think this will come out before those with guests who are incredible.
0:01:18 So I think all of them are either billionaires or soon-to-be billionaires.
0:01:21 But that’s, the money is almost the least interesting thing about each one of them.
0:01:24 Like what they did and how they roll, how they live is more interesting.
0:01:27 And we did them in person.
0:01:30 So for example, I went to Las Vegas.
0:01:30 I went to Tahoe.
0:01:32 And I’m basically staying at the person’s house.
0:01:35 And I’m hanging out with them all day.
0:01:40 And then the podcast is just kind of like a one or two hour recording in the middle of that day.
0:01:42 But I’m spending 12, 24 hours with this person.
0:01:46 And when you do that, you pick up a lot.
0:01:47 And neither of you or I have talked.
0:01:52 And both, but both you and I are kind of students of the game of life.
0:01:57 And one of the ways you’d be a student of the game of life is you don’t just try to do all the experiments on yourself, right?
0:01:59 That’s a pretty slow and painful way to do things.
0:02:04 A faster, easier way is to go and get a little Costco sample of somebody else’s life.
0:02:06 I’ve never had a fig before.
0:02:07 Let me try, let’s go try a fig.
0:02:09 Ah, almond butter.
0:02:10 Is this something I like?
0:02:11 Am I an almond butter guy?
0:02:14 And so I went and sampled these people’s lives.
0:02:14 And you did too.
0:02:21 And so what I wanted to do, if you’re down for it, is I think we each have three names of people we hung out with.
0:02:27 And I want to take the one thing that stuck with you that was not in the podcast.
0:02:30 Man, we get to hang out with so many amazing people.
0:02:32 And it absolutely wears off on you.
0:02:34 Our world is business.
0:02:38 But frankly, I find like just the money part to be a little bit empty.
0:02:41 And I think you agree with life is more rich than just money.
0:02:44 But it just so happens that we like being people who are experts at their field.
0:02:46 And the field is business.
0:02:50 And so there’s probably only 3,500 or 4,500 billionaires in the world.
0:02:53 And I feel like every year we get to hang out with like 30 of them.
0:02:57 And again, the money is not the important part.
0:03:02 But the fact that it’s just like there’s only 4,500 people of all the people on earth who are in this category.
0:03:05 It’s pretty exciting to be around someone who’s the best at their field.
0:03:14 And it 100% wears off to you, wears off on you, where you start normalizing being in the 1% of whatever activity you’re trying to be in.
0:03:15 Totally.
0:03:27 Yeah, and your money point is right, which is even if we were just like, if I ran into Kobayashi on the street, I’d be like, honey, this guy’s the greatest hot dog eater of all time.
0:03:28 Now, she wouldn’t care, to be clear.
0:03:31 But I would be like, it would be like meeting Kobe, right?
0:03:32 He’s the Kobe of eating hot dogs.
0:03:38 And so, you know, excellence in any form is interesting to me.
0:03:44 And anybody who gets an outlier result in a field that many people go try to choose, because it’s always interesting.
0:03:45 How did you get that?
0:03:48 Because if you’re interested in becoming an outlier in your field, you can actually learn from it in any field.
0:03:53 Anyways, so you’re right that our quote-unquote job gets us access to this.
0:03:59 Now, the giving part here is we don’t want to be selfish to just kind of keep for ourselves, you know, what we picked up.
0:04:00 So let’s jump in.
0:04:03 All right, so I go hang out with this guy, Hayes Barnard.
0:04:07 Most people don’t know who Hayes Barnard is, but his story is pretty crazy.
0:04:16 So the short version of his story is guy grows up, single mom, kind of, you know, from the dirt in, actually in Missouri.
0:04:22 And he ends up sort of hustling his way into a job, a sales job, then a tech sales job, then he ends up at Oracle.
0:04:31 And he works for Oracle in the 90s when Larry Ellison was, you know, basically he was flip-flopping between Larry Ellison and Bill Gates as, like, the wealthiest man in the world.
0:04:36 And so he becomes basically a competitive salesman.
0:04:43 And so he becomes a top sales guy at Oracle just by, like, working harder than everybody.
0:04:45 So he’s like, I would just get in earlier.
0:04:45 I would stay later.
0:04:46 I would work every weekend.
0:04:50 Those guys, you know, most of the sales guys who were doing well, by 3 p.m., they would leave.
0:04:52 They’d go play basketball or tennis or racquetball.
0:04:54 And I would just stay the extra three hours.
0:04:56 And I would stay the extra four hours.
0:04:58 And I would just do that every single day, and it just added up.
0:05:01 So he ends up becoming a top guy at Oracle.
0:05:05 But he sees that some of the other top guys at Oracle go leave and start these huge companies.
0:05:07 So Mark Benioff leaves and goes start Salesforce.
0:05:09 This other guy leaves and goes start this other company.
0:05:13 And so he starts to think, hmm, maybe I’m like them, right?
0:05:15 And maybe I should go do that.
0:05:28 And so he leaves, and he starts a mortgage company where he’s like, maybe the same way I could sell complicated enterprise software using a call center and some online ads, maybe I could sell a mortgage, right?
0:05:31 Most people at the time felt that mortgages were too complicated.
0:05:38 Like, you needed an in-person, you know, a local bank branch with a local banker who’s going to talk to you and hold your hand and all this stuff.
0:05:48 And he’s like, I don’t know, I think with, like, radio ads and a call center in Sacramento, I think I could just sell mortgages over the phone the same way I’ve just been selling Oracle databases.
0:05:50 Did he know anything about mortgages or?
0:05:55 No, but his friend from childhood is, like, best friend from, like, fourth grade or something like that.
0:05:59 He kind of knew a little about mortgages, and Hayes knew a lot about selling, so they leave to go start this thing.
0:06:04 In the 08 mortgage crash, he survived because they had been underwriting conservatively.
0:06:11 So they were the one mortgage company that was, like, not giving out subprime loans, so they survived the mortgage crisis.
0:06:16 But during that time, he diversifies because he’s like, instead of just selling mortgages, what if I go into the energy business?
0:06:18 What if I branch?
0:06:19 What if I diversify?
0:06:23 Instead of just selling mortgages, could we sell solar and help people with their utility bill?
0:06:29 So, like, what if I gave you a thing that’s cleaner for the environment, saves you money on your electricity?
0:06:31 So he starts a company that does that for solar.
0:06:36 Now, that solar company gets bought by SolarCity.
0:06:38 He ends up driving.
0:06:39 He’s not actually installing the solar.
0:06:43 So, like, you know, SolarCity would actually go install the solar.
0:06:46 If you don’t know, SolarCity was started by Elon Musk and his cousin.
0:06:50 And so he was selling the solar, and then SolarCity would go install it.
0:06:53 At one point, I think they made up, like, 50% of SolarCity’s revenue.
0:06:55 It was, like, insane.
0:06:56 He was driving so much revenue for them.
0:06:59 And so SolarCity acquires them.
0:07:02 SolarCity then ends up getting acquired by Tesla for $2 or $3 billion.
0:07:07 And then, you know, Tesla’s gone on this crazy run and, like, you know, whatever, 30x and 10.
0:07:13 So here’s this guy, Hayes, who is, you know, he grew up nowhere in Missouri.
0:07:20 He has dyslexia and a form of dyslexia where he ends up flunking out of the first grade because he can’t read properly.
0:07:22 You know, he works on a farm.
0:07:24 He’s a Subway sandwich artist.
0:07:27 And somehow this guy is now one of the wealthiest men in America, okay?
0:07:28 He’s a self-made billionaire now.
0:07:31 So I go, I want to do a podcast with Hayes.
0:07:33 So I hit him up.
0:07:33 I’m like, Hayes, would you do this?
0:07:34 I know you don’t do a lot of these.
0:07:35 Would you do this?
0:07:35 He says, yeah, sure.
0:07:36 No problem.
0:07:42 Now, the thing about Hayes, though, is that Hayes does not do anything at, like, a chill level.
0:07:43 So, like.
0:07:46 Dude, he was the most un-chill person I’ve ever been around.
0:07:48 Well, he’s fun to be around.
0:07:49 He’s actually extremely fun.
0:07:50 Like, he’s very funny.
0:07:50 He’s fun.
0:07:54 But, like, if he chooses to do something, he doesn’t have to do anything.
0:07:56 You know, he’s only, and this is his thing.
0:07:57 He says, he’s like, we play full out.
0:08:05 So, Sam, normally when we book a guest, especially, like, let’s say, one of the, like, more on the higher end of the range of success of guests,
0:08:10 what is the normal prep experience like maybe a week before?
0:08:11 Just walk through that.
0:08:13 Well, so sometimes we want to do a call with them.
0:08:19 But then other times if someone’s really successful, you’re, like, embarrassed to ask them, like, can I spend, like, an hour of your time just brainstorming?
0:08:22 And so sometimes Ari will call.
0:08:25 Sometimes one of us will call, depending on how successful they are, to not disrespect them.
0:08:26 And so it’s quite challenging.
0:08:30 The more successful they are, it’s like, can I waste an hour of your time?
0:08:31 Like, just prepare?
0:08:34 Or do I just show up with stories that I ask your friends and hopefully it goes great?
0:08:39 Yeah, and sometimes we send them, like, a doc, which is like, hey, here’s some, can you fill this out?
0:08:40 This will help us.
0:08:44 And then I would say half the time they do fill it out.
0:08:49 But half the time it’s, like, they give us either nothing or half filled out, something like that.
0:08:49 And we just show up.
0:08:51 We say, all right, we got to make it happen.
0:08:51 We understand.
0:08:52 And we hope it works.
0:08:53 This experience was completely different.
0:08:59 So Hayes not only calls me, he calls Ben two or three times before the podcast.
0:09:02 And he starts discussing, you know, what can we talk about?
0:09:04 Tell me what you think is going to be interesting.
0:09:05 How do we make this amazing?
0:09:06 He just keeps asking this question.
0:09:08 How do we make this amazing?
0:09:11 So instead of just saying, what are we going to talk about?
0:09:12 That’s the average question.
0:09:13 His was, how do we make this amazing?
0:09:15 And he keeps calling back.
0:09:19 And he’s basically like, when he says this, he’s like, I don’t say yes to many things.
0:09:21 But if I do say yes, I go all out.
0:09:27 And so first in the pre-pod prep, he’s, you know, really active.
0:09:29 And he keeps asking, how’s it going to be amazing?
0:09:33 And this idea he comes up with, he’s like, you know, most of the time you sit down and
0:09:35 people ask the same five questions about like, how’d you do it?
0:09:37 You know, what do you think about AI?
0:09:38 Blah, blah, blah.
0:09:39 Like the same questions.
0:09:44 And you get these robotic tech answers from these like, you know, these tech people.
0:09:45 And he’s like, let’s do it different.
0:09:47 So he’s like, why don’t you just come out to Tahoe?
0:09:48 Come to my house.
0:09:50 And let’s spend the whole day together.
0:09:51 Come do my morning routine with me.
0:09:52 You’re going to love it.
0:09:53 It’s going to be great.
0:09:55 All right.
0:09:58 A few episodes ago, I talked about something.
0:10:02 And I got thousands of messages asking me to go deeper and to explain.
0:10:03 And that’s what I’m about to do.
0:10:07 So I told you guys how I use ChatGPT as a life coach or a thought partner.
0:10:12 And what I did was I uploaded all types of amazing information.
0:10:18 So I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals, different books that I like,
0:10:20 issues going on in my personal life and businesses.
0:10:22 I uploaded so much information.
0:10:29 And so the output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions that I’m having issues with in my life.
0:10:30 Like, how should I respond to this email?
0:10:32 What’s the right decision?
0:10:35 Knowing that you know my goals for the future, things like that.
0:10:46 And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step-by-step process, showing the audience, showing you the software that I use to make this, the information that I had ChatGPT ask me, all this stuff.
0:10:48 So it’s super easy for you to use.
0:10:50 And like I said, I use this like 10 or 20 times a day.
0:10:51 It’s literally changed my life.
0:10:53 And so if you want that, it’s free.
0:10:54 There’s a link below.
0:11:00 Just click it, enter your email, and we will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes.
0:11:03 And I’ll show you how I use it, again, 10 to 20 times a day.
0:11:04 All right.
0:11:05 So check it out.
0:11:06 The link is below in the description.
0:11:07 Back to the episode.
0:11:11 And so we go to Tahoe.
0:11:13 And we’re like, cool.
0:11:14 We’ll be there Tuesday.
0:11:15 We’ll see you Wednesday for the recording.
0:11:16 And he goes, awesome.
0:11:18 Be at my house at 5 a.m.
0:11:19 Oh, my God.
0:11:19 5 a.m.
0:11:21 What are we doing here?
0:11:22 So we show up at 5 a.m.
0:11:25 And he’s like, boys, good morning.
0:11:29 He’s already like, I’m like rubbing the boogers out of my eye.
0:11:30 And he’s like awake.
0:11:33 And he goes, let’s go down to the lake.
0:11:33 Okay.
0:11:35 So we go down to the boat.
0:11:41 And we take this boat out for two minutes into the middle of Lake Tahoe.
0:11:43 It kills the engine.
0:11:44 And we’re like, okay, what’s happening?
0:11:46 It’s completely dark out, by the way.
0:11:47 The sun hasn’t even rose yet.
0:11:49 He’s like, so we’re going to do my morning routine.
0:11:51 He’s like, you’re going to love it.
0:11:53 He didn’t just say like, I hope you guys like this.
0:11:55 Or thanks for, you know, like, thanks for coming.
0:11:56 Like, I hope you have a good time.
0:11:58 He was just like, you’re going to love this.
0:11:59 This is going to be amazing.
0:12:02 He basically brainwashed me before I’m even out there of like, I do love this.
0:12:03 This is kind of amazing.
0:12:04 He was so charismatic.
0:12:07 He was just having a good, he was genuinely excited.
0:12:07 That’s the thing.
0:12:09 He’s not like trying to sell us on anything, right?
0:12:12 Like, he’s doing us a favor, inviting us into his life.
0:12:14 But he was genuinely excited for us.
0:12:15 And he’s like, my friends are out here.
0:12:16 This is great.
0:12:16 You’re going to love this.
0:12:18 So he kills the engine.
0:12:19 He turns on.
0:12:20 He’s like, there’s a little woo-woo.
0:12:24 But just, are you guys willing to play ball?
0:12:25 Like, just let’s do this today.
0:12:26 And you’ll like it.
0:12:28 So he puts on this breathwork routine.
0:12:34 And he’s like, I met this guy, you know, on an island with, from the guy who, you know,
0:12:38 the guy who started Cirque du Soleil, Guy, or whatever his name is.
0:12:41 He’s like, I met this kind of breathwork guru on his island.
0:12:42 And he’s amazing.
0:12:45 I’ve been doing this for like 20 years since then or something like that.
0:12:47 And so he, we do this 15-minute breathwork.
0:12:50 And then he’s like, all right, boys, stand up.
0:12:51 Let’s go.
0:12:52 We jump in the lake.
0:12:55 And we’re like, we do this kind of like cold plunge in the lake, basically.
0:12:57 And Lake Tahoe in the summertime is still freezing.
0:12:58 Yeah.
0:13:03 So we jump in, immediately, like, you know, lose all feeling in my body.
0:13:07 And then he’s like, okay, we’re going to go down and do a breath hold down underwater.
0:13:09 And for a minute, and like, this is going to be great.
0:13:10 It’s going to feel like you’re in space.
0:13:11 Open your eyes.
0:13:13 Like, I don’t have goggles.
0:13:14 He’s like, open your eyes.
0:13:15 I was like, okay.
0:13:17 And so we go underwater.
0:13:18 I open my eyes.
0:13:20 And it literally looks like you’re floating in space.
0:13:21 He’s right.
0:13:24 By the way, can only hold my breath for, no joke, seven seconds.
0:13:25 I don’t know what happened.
0:13:25 Yeah.
0:13:27 Well, when it’s freezing, it’s hard.
0:13:32 So I immediately go down and I’m like, nope, I’m done.
0:13:33 I pop back up.
0:13:34 He’s underwater.
0:13:35 So he comes up.
0:13:36 He’s like, okay, let’s do that again.
0:13:38 I was like, okay, yeah, yeah.
0:13:41 I need a redo because that was, you know, pretty short.
0:13:42 So we do it again.
0:13:43 And then he’s like, you know what?
0:13:45 I heard this thing.
0:13:45 This is an amazing thing.
0:13:50 And it said basically that like, you know, as you get older, you really want to make the
0:13:50 most of your life.
0:13:52 You guys are still a little bit younger than me.
0:13:53 You’ll, you’ll feel this too.
0:13:57 Like you get the sense of urgency about like, you realize, you know, your friends start getting
0:13:57 sick.
0:13:59 You know, your parents getting older.
0:14:02 You realize like, you know, this time is not, you know, time is, time is really precious.
0:14:04 And there’s a time hack.
0:14:05 You guys want to know the time hack?
0:14:06 We’re like, yeah, for sure.
0:14:07 What’s the time hack?
0:14:11 And he’s like, if you do something new every day, you sort of mark the day.
0:14:15 Cause like, you know, if I asked you, Sam, what’d you do five days ago?
0:14:18 It’s probably pretty hard to remember what you did five days ago, even yesterday.
0:14:19 It’s pretty hard to remember.
0:14:24 And that’s because when we’re in these routines and routines do serve us, but they, it causes
0:14:25 all the days to blend together.
0:14:30 But if you do one new thing a day, um, it sort of marks the day.
0:14:33 You know, you’re not going to remember every single day, but it makes that day more
0:14:33 memorable.
0:14:36 So he’s like, let’s figure out what we could do new today.
0:14:38 And we’re like, we’re like back on the boat shivering.
0:14:40 And he’s like, you see those rocks?
0:14:42 I always see those rocks when I do this routine, but I’ve never gone out there.
0:14:44 You guys down to swim out there?
0:14:45 It’s like, okay, yeah, let’s go.
0:14:46 I’m not going to say no.
0:14:53 So we jump in the water and we start swimming and he’s swimming like, you know, a shark basically
0:14:53 out there.
0:14:56 We are like, I’m like dying basically.
0:14:58 And behind me, I’m like, I don’t even know if Ben can swim.
0:15:02 I look back at Ben, like his glasses are like foggy.
0:15:03 I’m like, well, I don’t know what’s going on.
0:15:06 Diego has like shoulder dislocation problems.
0:15:09 I’m like, Diego is for sure going to dislocate his shoulder and just sink like a rock to the
0:15:09 bottom of Tahoe.
0:15:11 We’re all dying.
0:15:13 And we’re swimming from rock to rock, like little kids.
0:15:14 He’s like, let’s like playing tag.
0:15:14 Basically.
0:15:15 He’s like, let’s go over there.
0:15:16 All right, race you to this one.
0:15:19 And we go and he wants to get to the big, he’s like, look at that big rock.
0:15:20 Let’s get to the big rock.
0:15:21 We go to the big rock.
0:15:23 He ends up getting the big rock, jump off the big rock.
0:15:24 I had this great moment.
0:15:25 Come back to the boat.
0:15:28 And this is all like before 8 a.m.
0:15:30 And he’s like, I do this every day.
0:15:37 And I remember just having this feeling, which is like, this guy basically lives his life
0:15:38 at a level.
0:15:41 He plays at a, at a, like a full out level.
0:15:46 He plays with a level of intensity on everything that he was doing, whether it was like the podcast,
0:15:52 his morning routine, like each of the things I would do at a seven, he just does at a 10.
0:15:56 And if you think about that, like, how does that stack every single day?
0:15:59 Like that extra three units of intensity that he puts in.
0:16:03 And by the way, it’s not like he’s, it’s not like hard work in a sense.
0:16:06 Like he’s just like, he just goes for it, right?
0:16:06 He’s having more fun.
0:16:08 He’s willing to play more than us.
0:16:09 And we went and played pickleball with him.
0:16:10 We did whatever we did that day.
0:16:11 He was like this.
0:16:17 And, um, he told the story during the podcast of this where, you know, he was a certain way,
0:16:22 but he’s like, once I worked for Elon and he worked for Elon for 10 years, he’s like,
0:16:23 it broke my frame of reference.
0:16:27 Cause I was telling him, I was like, you kind of broke my frame.
0:16:29 Like I have a morning routine, but it’s not like this, right?
0:16:31 Like I have a, and I was like, by the way, it’s not the money.
0:16:33 Like, yes, you’ve got this beautiful.
0:16:35 Was it a sick house?
0:16:36 Oh my God, dude.
0:16:37 Unbelievable.
0:16:40 And to the point where he was like, he’s like, yeah, I prefer not to film this.
0:16:41 You know, I’m not trying to show off.
0:16:43 I’m like, yeah.
0:16:46 The people who try not to show off have the things worth showing off, of course.
0:16:52 And so I’m like, um, it’s, even if I had that house, would I act like, this is an honest
0:16:52 question I had.
0:16:57 I was like, even if I had this house and I had that boat and I had this little, like you
0:17:01 get in this like fricking like Willy Wonka elevator to get down from the house to the boat.
0:17:04 And I’m like, would I wake up at 5am every day and do this?
0:17:05 No chance.
0:17:12 I’d be cuddled up in bed with, you know, like I would be the little burrito tucked in with
0:17:15 my, just my eyes peeking out of the covers at five in the morning.
0:17:17 Uh, but he doesn’t, right?
0:17:21 That’s like kind of the difference between him and me is that he, he plays full out.
0:17:25 And so that was just the big takeaway for me from that whole experience was.
0:17:26 Do you want to live like that?
0:17:31 Like I, I, like, I think so when I’m around, I’ve been around people like this, like,
0:17:32 they’re crazy people.
0:17:37 And I think I admire so much about this and I want to take a little bits, but I don’t,
0:17:39 I don’t want to replicate that.
0:17:42 Like I don’t, I’m not a high energy person like that all the time.
0:17:43 I’m only a high energy person like that.
0:17:46 Some of the time Hayes was like that all the time I was around him.
0:17:48 He’s energy rich.
0:17:48 Yes.
0:17:49 I do want to be like that.
0:17:55 Cause I think that, cause I think that, well, first the feeling I had by 8am, I was like,
0:17:57 Oh, so I’ve conquered the world already.
0:18:00 Like what, what, what could you do to me today?
0:18:02 That’s going to make me feel bad, right?
0:18:06 Is anything really going to mess with my mood or my, you know, myself today?
0:18:10 Like, it’s pretty hard to do that when you like conquer the morning like that, but like,
0:18:11 forget the morning routine.
0:18:12 I’m like freaking up at 5am.
0:18:13 Like that’s sort of secondary.
0:18:18 The point was, if you’re going to do something, like just actually like do it fully.
0:18:23 And the thing you, the prerequisite for that is to be energy rich, to not be energy poor.
0:18:26 Like I went there because I’m like, Oh, this guy’s so successful.
0:18:27 He’s money rich.
0:18:32 And when I walked away, I was like, the money rich thing is the, is a by-product and
0:18:36 a complete secondary footnote to being incredibly energy rich.
0:18:38 And two of the guys said the same thing.
0:18:38 I don’t know if you remember this.
0:18:40 I said this when we went and hung out with Mr. Beast.
0:18:42 I was like, this guy’s like the energizer bunny.
0:18:46 And we were talking about like literally the, when he walks, his walking pace is faster than
0:18:49 the average human being by like, you know, two notches.
0:18:53 The two of the guys that came with us, they’re like, do you see how fast Hayes walked out?
0:18:54 It was like hard to keep up with them.
0:18:56 It’s like, just literally has a pep in his step.
0:19:01 And I think just, I think being energy rich is one of the more attractive things.
0:19:03 Like you see people who are contact rich.
0:19:04 It’s like, Oh wow.
0:19:05 They know all these famous people.
0:19:06 You see people who are money rich.
0:19:07 Oh wow.
0:19:08 They got all these dollars in the bank account.
0:19:12 To me, energy rich is very, very appealing.
0:19:16 To give like an example of this guy, Hayes, he’s not talked about at all.
0:19:20 He’s very under the radar for how big, a big of a big shot he is.
0:19:25 We’re with you and me and a bunch of people were with Jesse Itzler, who is a very gregarious,
0:19:27 loud personality and a great way.
0:19:29 Like he is also energy rich.
0:19:34 And I remember being in this room with these guys in a sauna actually.
0:19:37 And Hayes took over the room because of his stories and his energy.
0:19:44 And one thing led to another and they are apparently Hayes’s hobby is that he used to be into hip
0:19:48 hop and he loves to freestyle rap, which is a very strange thing.
0:19:52 Cause this guy is like a, he looks like me, but like 55.
0:19:54 He’s just like a blonde hair, Missouri guy.
0:19:58 And he is an amazing freestyle rapper.
0:20:03 They went and freestyle rapped and he was beatboxing for like six or seven minutes.
0:20:05 And they went at, they went and did this thing.
0:20:06 It was so good.
0:20:09 And I remember talking to him and being around him.
0:20:15 And I don’t think I’ve ever met someone whose oven burns that hot.
0:20:18 Like he was on fire the whole time.
0:20:19 Yeah, exactly.
0:20:22 He’s an incredible dude.
0:20:25 The other amazing thing, by the way, hung out with him maybe 12 hours straight.
0:20:27 And, um.
0:20:28 Did he work?
0:20:29 He was literally taking the day off.
0:20:33 So he was like, he’s like, I was like, dude, Hayes, you don’t got to do this, man.
0:20:37 Like, I appreciate it, but like, you don’t have to, you know, it’s not like normal for
0:20:38 a podcast to do this.
0:20:39 He’s like, no, you guys came all the way out here.
0:20:40 I want to make the time.
0:20:43 You know, I know, I know you guys took time.
0:20:43 I want to make the time.
0:20:46 He’s like, I thought this would be, I thought that would be so rude.
0:20:50 If I just show up and we record and then you leave, like, no, I want to make the time.
0:20:56 One thing that he, that stood out, he did not check his phone a single time in 12 hours.
0:20:59 And I told him at the end, I was like, is that normal?
0:21:02 Like, I know you’re getting emails.
0:21:03 I know you’re getting Slack messages.
0:21:04 Like, just like all of us, right?
0:21:06 Like 10 times more than all of us.
0:21:08 You run a $10 billion company.
0:21:10 He’s the CEO of a $10 billion company.
0:21:13 And he did not check his phone a single time.
0:21:17 And he’s just like, well, you know, like if I’m with you guys, I want to be with you guys.
0:21:18 And if I’m working, I’m going to be working.
0:21:24 And I was like, well, if you say it like that, then yeah, I guess I’m a little bitch for, yeah, let me put this away then.
0:21:34 Dude, no amount of people or stories that I can tell or probably you also can tell from that is going to be the Hayes Carl hang session.
0:21:34 That was really good.
0:21:38 Did Ben and Diego have a great time too?
0:21:41 Oh, I think Ben is at home making Valentine’s cards for Hayes right now.
0:21:42 He’s just like, I love that man.
0:21:43 I was like, I do too.
0:21:45 Honestly, I do too.
0:21:46 What a guy.
0:21:48 If you Google his name too, this is all public.
0:21:55 He, like his side hobby was, there’s a famous hotel in Tahoe or maybe Reno.
0:21:56 I forget exactly where it is.
0:21:57 And he owns it.
0:22:00 And he was telling me about the renovation and everything like that.
0:22:02 And it was like an epic thing.
0:22:04 I forget exactly what the story is.
0:22:05 So the story is this.
0:22:08 He’s in the lake doing the morning routine every day.
0:22:11 And he’s like, he’s like, I didn’t think about like manifesting.
0:22:13 I don’t even know what that word really means.
0:22:17 But he’s like, I was in the lake and I was thinking about my life and like, you know,
0:22:18 what I want.
0:22:18 And I was full.
0:22:21 I was just filling up with kind of like the feelings that I wanted.
0:22:26 He’s like, and I see this hotel and there’s this hotel that was kind of like on the, you
0:22:27 know, over the hill a little bit.
0:22:28 It was on the, on the other side of it.
0:22:29 He’s like, and it’s two.
0:22:31 It’s literally like one minute from his house.
0:22:36 And he sees that hotel while he’s in the, while he’s doing his cold plunge in Lake Tahoe.
0:22:39 And he just decides looking at it, he goes, I’m going to buy that hotel.
0:22:41 I don’t know how, but I’m going to buy that hotel.
0:22:44 And then he starts working on it.
0:22:46 He finds out it’s owned by Larry Ellison, his old boss.
0:22:49 His old boss’s boss’s boss or whatever.
0:22:54 And he goes and he purchases the hotel and they’re turning it into a proper hotel in Tahoe.
0:22:56 And he walked us through the construction of it or whatever.
0:22:59 And even that, you know, he’s architecting his life.
0:23:00 It’s not like he’s doing it to make money.
0:23:05 He was like, we’re going to put pickleball career, pool here, this here, this here, all
0:23:05 these activities.
0:23:06 He’s like, I want a place to do activities.
0:23:09 I want a place for my friends to come and stay during the summers.
0:23:14 Like this will just make my life so much better if we, if we, if we generate this, if we make
0:23:15 this happen.
0:23:17 Incredibly generative guy.
0:23:22 Cutting your sales cycle in half sounds pretty impossible, but that’s exactly what Sandler
0:23:24 training did with HubSpot.
0:23:26 They use Breeze.
0:23:31 HubSpot’s AI tools to tailor every customer interaction without losing their personal
0:23:31 touch.
0:23:33 And the results were incredible.
0:23:36 Click-through rates jumped 25%.
0:23:38 Qualified leads quadrupled.
0:23:41 And people spent three times longer on their landing pages.
0:23:46 Go to HubSpot.com to see how Breeze can help your business grow.
0:23:48 All right, let’s do the next one.
0:23:53 All right, man, this is gonna, you started off really strong there.
0:23:53 It’s hard to follow.
0:23:57 All right, this person I actually just hung out with.
0:23:59 I didn’t do a pod with them yet because they refused to come on.
0:24:01 So I’m gonna say a little bit of information about them.
0:24:02 Enough to make it awesome.
0:24:04 Not enough that I would totally blow up their spot.
0:24:06 But have you heard of the company Buck Mason?
0:24:07 Buck Mason.
0:24:08 I’ve heard of it.
0:24:09 What do they do?
0:24:10 Is that a jeans company now?
0:24:10 What is it?
0:24:11 Sort of, sort of.
0:24:13 So they started in 2013.
0:24:16 And they started in 2013 selling something very simple.
0:24:17 A t-shirt.
0:24:19 And their goal was just to make the best t-shirt.
0:24:21 I’m actually wearing one of them right now.
0:24:24 And they didn’t, they tried to raise money.
0:24:29 He was like, I tried to raise as much money as I could that I got lucky because I was horrible
0:24:31 at fundraising and I could raise no money.
0:24:34 And so they bootstrapped this company.
0:24:38 I think it actually started with like a Kickstarter or some type of auction like that.
0:24:40 Like a pay and then we’ll make it type of vibe.
0:24:42 And they built this company.
0:24:46 And over time, they’ve grown it and grown it and grown it.
0:24:55 And I suspect, you didn’t tell me, but I suspect they do somewhere in the $150 million a year range.
0:24:57 And he has 42 stores now.
0:24:59 So when you go to buckmason.com, what do you see?
0:25:01 Yes.
0:25:03 Well, I see this is like this nostalgic.
0:25:08 I see, I see this like video of these guys from what is it?
0:25:09 Maybe like the 80s.
0:25:11 I don’t know what era this is.
0:25:13 It’s like a California cowboy 80s vibe.
0:25:13 Yeah.
0:25:15 Yeah, exactly.
0:25:19 And I see a bunch of t-shirts and colored shirts and jeans, pants.
0:25:25 So I love this brand and I became friendly with him because I’ve DMed him to get him to come
0:25:27 on the podcast and he refuses to come on.
0:25:28 And I ask him why.
0:25:30 And he says, I just want the brand to be the face.
0:25:32 I don’t want to like get too popular.
0:25:33 I don’t want to be the face of the brand.
0:25:34 I want the brand to be the brand.
0:25:38 Which is always like, whenever I hear someone say that, I’m like, oh, you’re the best.
0:25:39 You’re going to win.
0:25:40 Oh, so you’re amazing.
0:25:41 Yeah.
0:25:42 Like, oh, so yeah.
0:25:47 Whenever you hear someone say that, it’s like, okay, so you’re absolutely going to win and
0:25:48 you have the right attitude.
0:25:54 And so he started this company in 2013 and clothing companies are a pain in the butt.
0:25:56 You and I know people in this industry.
0:25:57 We know e-com guys.
0:25:59 It’s really, really hard.
0:26:01 And it takes a long time, I think, to figure it out.
0:26:08 But basically they got to the point in 10 or 15 years now, it’s 2013, so 12 years, where
0:26:10 it’s really starting to fire on all cylinders.
0:26:11 He’s grown into 52 stores.
0:26:15 And I started talking to him about the history and everything like that.
0:26:19 And I started realizing, it’s not that crazy to do this.
0:26:21 Like, it’s really hard.
0:26:26 But I was thinking about every project that I’ve started since 2013.
0:26:30 So in 2013, I had just graduated college.
0:26:30 Do you remember where you were?
0:26:32 It was 2013 sushi era?
0:26:33 No, no.
0:26:35 That’s when I moved to San Francisco, Monkey Inferno.
0:26:37 So what was sushi era?
0:26:37 11?
0:26:39 Yeah, 2010 and 11.
0:26:45 So imagine you starting a sushi store in 2011 and you just, you were chained to that
0:26:47 company and you just had to stick with it.
0:26:49 You had no other options.
0:26:50 You just had to.
0:26:53 I have a feeling it would be a huge success.
0:26:58 And I have a feeling that if I had done the same with whatever I was doing, that there’s
0:27:04 definitely a world where I would be five or 10 times more successful than I am now because
0:27:07 of just compounding, of sticking with something.
0:27:13 And I sort of felt, first of all, 12 years, it sounds like not a long time.
0:27:15 But when I thought about, well, where was I in 2012?
0:27:19 And what all have I jumped from thing to thing to thing?
0:27:23 And should I have just stuck to one thing and done that the entire time?
0:27:24 And where would I be now?
0:27:26 Because he was telling me his story.
0:27:29 And I love where this guy, Sasha, his name is Sasha Cohn.
0:27:32 I love to hear the story where he is now, which is like, I’ve got this amazing team.
0:27:33 We’re firing on cylinders.
0:27:36 I just get to work on the really exciting projects.
0:27:38 And it’s just going great.
0:27:39 Cash flow is not an issue, whatever, et cetera.
0:27:43 It doesn’t feel like that leading up to it, obviously.
0:27:45 It’s really, really hard.
0:27:48 And the majority of the time, I would think you’d want to quit.
0:27:50 And the majority of the time, I would think a guy like him, he didn’t say this.
0:27:54 I’m guessing if someone offered to buy the company from him at different weeks throughout the year,
0:27:57 I bet he would have said yes, just because it’s really freaking hard.
0:28:04 But I just remember thinking, like, I wish I had the foresight to stick with this.
0:28:06 Yes.
0:28:07 Like, I wish I would have.
0:28:15 I regret that a little bit when I see where I’m like, I don’t exactly want to pay the price that you had to pay because that was really hard.
0:28:19 But when I see where you are now, it seems very attractive.
0:28:21 Yeah, that’s a great one.
0:28:24 Honestly, actually, that was pretty common amongst all the people I’ve met with.
0:28:26 Actually, two of them even said this.
0:28:29 They go, I have very high pain tolerance.
0:28:32 And the reason why they were saying it was actually not as a brag.
0:28:35 They were like, you know, one of the problems is I have a really high pain tolerance.
0:28:37 So I will keep doing something.
0:28:43 Even when it’s not, you know, quite right or not obvious, there probably was a better way or a better idea I could have done.
0:28:45 I don’t know.
0:28:46 I’m just, that’s who I am.
0:28:47 I just keep going.
0:28:49 Hayes even said this kind of off the record.
0:28:54 I was like, dude, what do you think is the difference about, like, you know, you and a bunch of other people?
0:28:58 What I was really interested in was, and I probably didn’t say this right,
0:29:03 but when we were talking about the morning routine, he said he has a different friend come and do it with him every morning.
0:29:06 And so he was like, yeah, yes, whatever.
0:29:10 He’s like, Tony Gonzalez did this with me yesterday, the Hall of Fame tight end.
0:29:14 And then he was like, oh, yeah, over the week, he’s like, oh, he had this thing on his knee.
0:29:15 And I was like, what happened to your knee?
0:29:16 You got cut up there?
0:29:22 He’s like, yeah, I was mountain biking with, I think his name is Lyndon, like the Elon’s cousin from Solar City.
0:29:23 He’s like, we were mountain biking yesterday.
0:29:24 We went, you see that mountain?
0:29:25 We went all the way over there.
0:29:27 I was like, God, this guy’s so active.
0:29:29 He’s unbelievably active, this man.
0:29:32 But also, like, he’s hanging out with Hall of Famers.
0:29:35 Like, he was talking about Elon, and his son went and worked at SpaceX.
0:29:38 And he’s like, I was like, oh, you didn’t have him come work with you?
0:29:41 And he’s like, no, I wanted him to go see what it’s like to work with Elon.
0:29:42 He’s like, I just wanted him to go.
0:29:49 Like, it took me a while to go see what the hardest working person who tackles the biggest problems on earth.
0:29:53 You know, I worked 10 years of my career, 15 years of my career before that happened.
0:29:55 I wanted my son to see it, like, right away.
0:29:58 But yeah, just incredible stick-to-it-ness for all of them.
0:30:00 Because I’ll do my next one.
0:30:00 Yeah.
0:30:02 So, next one is Hormozzi.
0:30:07 So, I go to Las Vegas, and I hang out with Alex Hormozzi.
0:30:10 And a lot of people know Hormozzi, because he makes so much content.
0:30:13 I don’t think, I actually think Alex Hormozzi doesn’t get enough credit.
0:30:17 Every time I hang out with him, I think, dude, you’re really wise.
0:30:18 Like, this is not a facade.
0:30:19 Yeah, he’s actually very legit.
0:30:25 So, okay, so I have a bunch of things that I could say as my takeaway, but I promised one.
0:30:27 So, here’s my one of Hormozzi.
0:30:29 Student of the game.
0:30:30 Okay, so what does this mean?
0:30:37 We’re talking, and I asked him, I said, you know, I get a lot of emails, but you put
0:30:39 out so much more content, and you have a much bigger audience.
0:30:44 You must be getting 100 emails a day from entrepreneurs who want some advice from you,
0:30:45 or want some help, or want you to invest.
0:30:48 And then he does these workshops every weekend with 100 entrepreneurs.
0:30:55 So, I was like, so you’re seeing another maybe 500 plus, maybe 1,000 plus entrepreneurs in your
0:30:56 workshops that are in person.
0:31:01 And then you have all the deals that you look at, maybe another few thousand deals that you
0:31:01 look at.
0:31:06 Probably looking, he’s probably meeting, I don’t know, 5,000 entrepreneurs a year, at the
0:31:06 minimum.
0:31:12 And I was like, what do you think is the mistake, the biggest mistake you see them make?
0:31:17 I asked him this, and he says, they’re only studying their business.
0:31:19 They’re not a student of the game of business.
0:31:20 So, what do you mean?
0:31:26 He goes, well, when you start a company, you’re very narrowly focused on your business, your
0:31:28 industry, your business model.
0:31:32 So, he’s like, you know, Sam, you’re doing the hustle newsletter.
0:31:35 You probably knew a ton about newsletters, right?
0:31:40 You knew everything about other newsletters, and you knew everything about maybe the media
0:31:41 industry as a whole.
0:31:45 And I think you’re very good about being a student of the game, but I would say most people
0:31:48 were probably, you know, even one-tenth as curious as you.
0:31:52 But then you might also have gone and looked at the events business, and then the SaaS business,
0:31:56 and other businesses to try to understand, like, oh, is that a better business to be in?
0:32:01 And actually, you started in the events business, then you went into the media blogging business,
0:32:05 and then you found your way into the newsletter business, and you were like, that’s a better
0:32:05 business to be in.
0:32:10 And now you’re in a paid community business that’s actually a better business to be in than even
0:32:11 the one we were before.
0:32:15 And the reason why is because you’re a student of the game of business, not just your business.
0:32:17 And Alex basically was like, I made this mistake.
0:32:19 You know, I was basically a gym operator.
0:32:23 I had one gym, and then I had two gyms, I had three gyms, and I was going to own and operate
0:32:23 gyms.
0:32:26 And I got really good at owner operating a gym.
0:32:30 But the best thing he did was he went to this mastermind, and I think Russell Brunson was
0:32:36 there, and they basically were like, you’re a 10 out of 10 entrepreneur going after a
0:32:37 two out of 10 opportunity.
0:32:40 Like, forget opening and running gyms.
0:32:45 It sounds like you’re amazing at getting a gym to have no members to go to like a ton
0:32:45 of members.
0:32:47 Why don’t you sell that?
0:32:53 Create a, you know, sell the ability for any gym to fill up their, to get more members.
0:32:56 And so then he’s like, ah, okay, that’s smart.
0:32:57 And he goes and he learns about other business models.
0:33:01 He realizes that he should do this thing called gym launch, where he would fly to a gym,
0:33:06 and he would basically say, hey, look, if I can get you 500 more members, can I keep
0:33:08 the first month of their membership?
0:33:13 And then you are, you know, the six weeks of pay that they’re going to pay up front, and
0:33:15 you get to keep all the recurring membership behind that.
0:33:16 They’re like, all right, sure.
0:33:17 He’s like, I had no risk to you.
0:33:18 You pay me nothing.
0:33:19 I’ll run my own ads.
0:33:20 But I get to keep what I kill.
0:33:23 And so that became gym launch, and that became the thing that was really, really successful.
0:33:28 And now he’s in a better business, you know, like, let’s say private equity, and he’s
0:33:32 buying SaaS companies, so he’s gotten into an even better business than that, right?
0:33:33 Private equity is a better business.
0:33:37 And so he’s like, I think most people aren’t a student of the game of business.
0:33:42 And at the end of, we basically talk for, I don’t know, two and a half hours.
0:33:43 We do, like, a two-part episode.
0:33:47 And he had, before that, he had done two podcasts.
0:33:50 So this guy’s done, like, you know, basically eight hours straight of talking.
0:33:56 And where I think most people would be, like, passed out on the floor or just ready to go
0:33:59 home or just want to go eat or, like, just be like, can you guys get out of my office now?
0:34:01 He was super curious still.
0:34:03 And he’s asking me a ton of questions after the pod.
0:34:04 And he asked me a question.
0:34:06 He’s like, you know, what would you do differently if you were me?
0:34:10 And you know me, I can’t, like, hold my tongue.
0:34:13 So I’m like, yeah, honestly, like, I think this.
0:34:17 And I gave him a very blunt and honest answer of, like, I think you’re amazing at this,
0:34:20 but I think this part of what you do doesn’t do you justice.
0:34:22 And I think it actually makes you look, it’s, like, bad for your brand.
0:34:24 And I think you shouldn’t be doing that.
0:34:26 How did he receive that?
0:34:27 Extremely well.
0:34:31 And this is kind of, like, kudos to him for, A, being curious, and then, B, being not defensive.
0:34:33 And so he texts me the next morning.
0:34:36 I didn’t even give him my number, but he gets my number from somebody.
0:34:38 And he says this.
0:34:39 He goes, I just want to say thanks again for the pod.
0:34:42 I’ve been thinking a lot about what we talked about at the end.
0:34:44 Then he goes, it’s Hormozy, by the way.
0:34:48 And then he goes, I’m going to make some content changes.
0:34:50 I appreciate you caring enough to say something.
0:34:55 I thought that was just, like, a really kind message, but also, like, you know, a testament
0:35:01 to him for being extremely open-minded and being a student of the game and being, like,
0:35:02 having that mindset of, I’m here.
0:35:04 I’m going to try to learn something for every single person I meet.
0:35:07 That’s just such a positive attribute to have in general.
0:35:11 I’m good friends with a guy who bought one of Alex’s companies.
0:35:13 So Alex started this thing called Allen Software.
0:35:16 My friend was the buyer of it.
0:35:19 And that is an interesting place to be in.
0:35:25 So the person who you buy, the buyer of your company, they know all of your, they know the
0:35:26 truth.
0:35:27 They know all your dirty secrets.
0:35:27 Yeah.
0:35:28 They know all the dirty, they do everything.
0:35:34 And I was like, Lloyd, um, this is when Alex first started getting popping before we ever
0:35:35 even had him on the pod.
0:35:36 I was like, Lloyd, is this guy legit?
0:35:37 Like, this seems to, could be true.
0:35:42 And to this day, Lloyd is like, he’s the smartest person I know about business.
0:35:45 Like, he, like, knows everything about Alex.
0:35:47 That’s what due diligence is.
0:35:48 And he is, knows everything.
0:35:51 And he still is like, this guy’s the best.
0:35:53 When I need advice, he’s my favorite.
0:35:55 It’s like your doctor’s giving you a colonoscopy.
0:35:57 He’s like, yeah, he’s got a great gut.
0:35:58 Yeah.
0:36:02 And so that, like, tells a lot about him.
0:36:05 And what’s funny is Alex comes off as a very serious guy.
0:36:07 And he is a pretty serious guy.
0:36:08 But he’s a lot more fun.
0:36:11 Like, I’m able to have fun with him whenever I’m with him.
0:36:14 He’s way more fun than he gives off.
0:36:15 That was one of the things I told him.
0:36:17 I was like, you come off so serious.
0:36:19 But you’re actually, you have a great sense of humor.
0:36:22 You should show that and show yourself having fun.
0:36:26 And not just, like, I paint the windows black and I grind, right?
0:36:27 That is part of you.
0:36:28 But there is another part of you.
0:36:33 And I think you don’t really do yourself justice in, like, not showing that side.
0:36:35 This is so funny.
0:36:41 As we were texting, my friend Lloyd just texted me about Alex.
0:36:43 A compliment about Alex.
0:36:44 The same guy I’m referring to.
0:36:45 Just out of the blue just now?
0:36:46 Out of the blue.
0:36:47 1249.
0:36:48 It’s 1252 right now.
0:36:54 He just texted me a thing about how Alex just gave him some great advice, which is pretty
0:36:54 funny.
0:36:55 That’s hilarious.
0:36:56 That’s pretty awesome.
0:37:03 Did you, their seminar business, so basically, a lot of people don’t know this, but acquisition.com
0:37:06 either buys or invests in companies, whatever, pretty normal.
0:37:11 But they also have, like, a seminar business, which is, like, on paper, if you were to think
0:37:12 about it, like, the worst business to be in.
0:37:14 You’re selling your time for money, yeah.
0:37:21 Yeah, they own UFC’s old headquarters, and people spend $5,000 or $10,000 to come for
0:37:22 a three-day, like, seminar.
0:37:28 And according to Alex, but also, I just, like, ran into math, and you could, like, see, like,
0:37:29 the schedule, how full it is.
0:37:31 I think that thing is killing it.
0:37:37 So that was my runner-up takeaway, which is, turn your, there’s a business, a more practical
0:37:38 business lesson.
0:37:40 Turn your cost centers into profit centers.
0:37:42 So he said two things about this.
0:37:46 The first is the, on the workshops that you’re talking about, or the seminars.
0:37:52 So he was like, well, we’re doing acquisition.com, and we’re, because of that, we’re talking to
0:37:54 all these companies, and we’re diligencing all these deals.
0:37:56 And I’m basically, that’s a big cost to me, right?
0:38:00 I’m paying, I have a team of people that’s diligencing all these businesses.
0:38:04 We meet the entrepreneur, we ask them a bunch of questions, we dig into their business, and,
0:38:07 you know, we’re only doing one deal out of every so many, right?
0:38:10 So he’s like, all the others are just the cost of doing business, and it’s costing me
0:38:11 a few million dollars a year.
0:38:15 So he has the idea, like, how do I turn my cost center into a profit center?
0:38:17 So he’s like, well, let me just try this.
0:38:21 So he says, all right, I’m going to invite, whatever, 50 entrepreneurs out to our headquarters,
0:38:22 come spend two days with us.
0:38:24 We will dig into your business.
0:38:28 We’ll learn what’s working, what’s not working, and we’ll help you sort of unblock.
0:38:32 And like, you know, maybe if you’re a great fit, like, you know, we should have a conversation.
0:38:36 But like, this is really about understanding what’s going on in your business, how to unblock
0:38:36 you.
0:38:37 Okay, so that’s what they did.
0:38:42 And basically, he turned a thing that was losing him a few million dollars a year of people cost
0:38:46 into, I think, like $10 million plus a free cash flow.
0:38:48 And he said the same thing about content.
0:38:51 He goes, I don’t make content because I enjoy it.
0:38:53 I make content because it builds my brand.
0:38:54 And I was like, I really, I do it because I enjoy it.
0:38:55 Like, I like doing this.
0:39:00 He’s like, well, he’s like, the way I think about it is this, the old, in the old world,
0:39:05 let’s say the TV era or the radio era, you had to spend millions of dollars of your money
0:39:07 to build your brand in the consumer’s mind.
0:39:11 The crazy thing about social media is you get paid to build your brand.
0:39:14 So he’s like, yeah, like I make all this content.
0:39:17 I’m building my brand, but I’m making money doing that.
0:39:21 So he, again, he turned a cost center into a profit center on the content side too.
0:39:25 And he loves it, by the way, he absolutely loves it.
0:39:31 I think you and Alex actually have very similar attributes, which is you both like teaching.
0:39:35 And so like, I’ve been talking to him, I’ve been buddies with him for a little while and
0:39:37 we’ll just be talking about what’s up, what are you doing?
0:39:42 And he’s like, oh, I’m making a Google document for my staff on how to sell better or how to
0:39:43 do this.
0:39:45 Like he loves process and he loves teaching.
0:39:46 Yes.
0:39:47 Yeah.
0:39:50 That’s, that’s the part I think he really loves is writing.
0:39:54 Like I actually like writing out the stuff, like almost in textbook style.
0:39:54 All right.
0:39:56 Uh, you want to do another one or you want me to go?
0:39:56 All right.
0:39:57 Here’s a quick one.
0:39:59 Do you know the company Zapier?
0:40:00 Yeah, I do.
0:40:03 Zapier was founded in 2011.
0:40:07 Another company, by the way, that was founded way, it’s way older than I thought.
0:40:12 So Zapier is a company that, um, they now they’re basically an AI company.
0:40:16 Like they make, uh, ways for you to connect, uh, different AI stuff.
0:40:21 So like if you’re chat GPT, you can be like, you know, make a, whenever I get a calendar
0:40:23 invite, do this and use chat GPT to do it, whatever.
0:40:25 They started in 2011.
0:40:30 Now, I think they do something like 400 or $500 million a year in revenue.
0:40:33 And they’ve only raised a million dollars of funding.
0:40:39 And they founded the company out of Jefferson city, Missouri, which is the capital of Missouri
0:40:40 near where I’m from.
0:40:42 The smallest town you could think of.
0:40:43 It’s like nothing.
0:40:46 It’s like when you think of in the middle of nowhere, Missouri, you’re going to think of
0:40:46 Jeff city.
0:40:54 And I met Wade because years ago I used to host this event called hustle con and you spoke
0:40:54 there.
0:40:57 A bunch of other people spoke there and Wade showed up.
0:41:01 Wade wasn’t supposed to speak until like two o’clock and he showed up at like 8am and him
0:41:05 and I sat backstage the entire time.
0:41:07 And we, for two days, actually, it was a two day event.
0:41:09 He sat with me the whole time.
0:41:13 And the reason he sat with me is I would have all of the speakers come to the green room two
0:41:14 hours in advance.
0:41:16 And I always lied to them.
0:41:19 And I think, you know, the story where I would say you have to come for mic check, but of
0:41:20 course there is no mic check.
0:41:24 The mic works perfectly, but we just wanted to hang out.
0:41:26 Like there’s no mic check for a conference.
0:41:28 Like you just put the lapel on and it works.
0:41:29 It works.
0:41:30 I would tell people, Oh, you have to speak at three.
0:41:32 Make sure you’re here at one for mic check.
0:41:35 The reality was, is I just wanted to hang out with them backstage.
0:41:40 And there was one time, like I distinctly remember it was like Casey Neistat, uh, the founder
0:41:41 of we work.
0:41:43 It was, uh, Wade from Zapier.
0:41:47 And then like the founder of class pass and Tucker max, if you know, Tucker max.
0:41:51 And we were like all in a room and I was like, how wild is this?
0:41:52 And I wouldn’t say a word.
0:41:54 I would just listen to all these conversations people were having.
0:41:58 And Wade was with the one guy who stayed the entire time with me.
0:42:01 And we just sat and listened to people talking and it was so fun.
0:42:02 And that’s how I got to know Wade.
0:42:09 I had him on the pod, uh, last week because I wanted to see how he’s using AI and it was
0:42:10 crazy.
0:42:12 This guy, because he’s Wade’s a billionaire.
0:42:15 So Wade is probably 35 years old.
0:42:18 I think he started the call, uh, the company when he was a senior in college.
0:42:22 And I think he graduated college in 2011 Zapier there.
0:42:28 They, they, they did a funding round, I think three years ago, uh, uh, six or $7 billion
0:42:28 valuation.
0:42:31 I asked them where do they think they’re going to be in five years.
0:42:32 He told me a billion in revenue.
0:42:37 So the, I don’t know what that means the company’s worth, but I know that it means that on paper,
0:42:37 he’s a billionaire.
0:42:41 And I was like, why are you living in Jeff city, Missouri?
0:42:43 He was like, well, it’s where my family lives and I like it here.
0:42:48 And I was like, wait, does anyone know how big of a big shot you are there?
0:42:50 He’s like, no, the people here don’t use Zapier.
0:42:52 Why would like, so they have no idea.
0:42:54 And I was like, well, do you have like a fancy house?
0:42:55 Like, do you stick out?
0:42:57 He’s like, no, like no one has any idea.
0:42:58 Like, I’m just like a guy.
0:43:05 Uh, and I thought that it was so cool to see because I was hanging out with Sasha, this
0:43:07 guy who started Buck Mason, a very cool brand.
0:43:11 I was hanging out with Eric who has founded ramp and is the hottest thing going.
0:43:13 And everyone knows in the tech world, what ramp is.
0:43:17 And it’s one of the fastest growing companies and people know Zapier and everything, but
0:43:18 they don’t know Wade, the founder.
0:43:22 And it was so interesting how he was just a guy.
0:43:24 It was, and he was just, he was just a guy.
0:43:25 That’s all he was.
0:43:29 And he very had that every man, uh, mentality or every man vibe.
0:43:34 And he came on the pod to talk about AI and he was just like Dharmesh.
0:43:35 He was a nerd.
0:43:37 Like he was in the weeds and he loved it.
0:43:40 And he was incredibly passionate and his, he didn’t have a fancy webcam.
0:43:46 It was him and, uh, it looked like a small, very small office in his house and it was just
0:43:49 totally unassuming and I loved it.
0:43:56 And so I think my biggest takeaway with him was how passionate he was about this game that
0:44:06 he turned into a career and how inspired I was that he was not flexing.
0:44:11 And he truly like, it was the opposite of Hayes where not that Hayes flexes.
0:44:14 I mean, where Hayes is just full of energy and he’s like, I want to manifest.
0:44:15 I want to do this.
0:44:16 This was the opposite.
0:44:18 It was an introvert nerdy guy who just did what he loved.
0:44:21 And it just, it worked out and he just was really happy go lucky.
0:44:26 And it was really fun because I’m used to these Hayes guys.
0:44:29 I’m not quite, but like these like alpha, like, let’s get it.
0:44:30 Let’s get after life.
0:44:30 Let’s manifest.
0:44:31 Let’s have fun.
0:44:31 Let’s do this.
0:44:37 And it’s awesome to get the opposite of that because I think when people listen to this
0:44:42 podcast, I hope one of the takeaways is that there’s a million ways to get done what you
0:44:43 want to get done.
0:44:45 There’s a million ways to achieve your dreams.
0:44:47 There’s a million ways to get rich.
0:44:51 There’s a million ways to go to where you want to go and where you want to go can be anywhere.
0:44:55 And there’s, there are maybe some best practices, but I can give you tons of examples of people
0:44:58 doing the exact opposite and they’re just as happy and just as effective.
0:45:00 So that was my big takeaway with Wade.
0:45:01 I like that.
0:45:05 Yeah, there’s a, you know, you get to create your own little heaven on earth.
0:45:08 And that’s one of the cool things when you go and you meet these people, you get to sample
0:45:12 what they chose for themselves and you pick up like, Ooh, I really want that.
0:45:14 Or in some cases, Ooh, I really wouldn’t want that.
0:45:18 You know, uh, there was one guy who won’t be, won’t be named that not in this trip, but
0:45:27 in previous one where this huge house and fancy cars and all this stuff, but also like huge
0:45:28 headaches with all of that.
0:45:30 Oh, I got to get the, this repaired and this.
0:45:32 And then that car got a scratch and then this has this.
0:45:35 And it was like, man, you own these things and then they own you.
0:45:36 And it’s like, Oh wow.
0:45:41 Like definitely for me is a total, that would be a total trap to fall into.
0:45:41 Good.
0:45:43 I’m glad I saw it firsthand so I can avoid that.
0:45:46 Whereas with other people for them, that is their heaven on earth.
0:45:47 They want that.
0:45:51 They, they, they actually prefer that trade off of, you know, and so you want to, it’s good
0:45:55 to sample the different sort of styles so you can get, you know, get a feel for what, what
0:45:56 you think is going to work for you.
0:45:59 Cause I think people had this idea of like, Oh, you just got to do what you want.
0:46:03 Reality is you don’t know exactly what you want until you’re even exposed to certain things.
0:46:06 And then you sort of develop taste about what it is that you like and what it is that you,
0:46:07 how you want to be.
0:46:11 Um, you can sort of, you can modify yourself based on, you know, what you’re, what you’re
0:46:11 exposed to.
0:46:16 So you guys know this, but I have a company called Hampton, joinhampton.com.
0:46:18 It’s a vetted community for founders and CEOs.
0:46:23 Well, we have this member named LaVon and LaVon saw a bunch of members talking about the same
0:46:27 problem within Hampton, which is that they spent hours manually moving data into a PDF.
0:46:30 It’s tedious, it’s annoying, and it’s a waste of time.
0:46:34 And so LaVon, like any great entrepreneur, he built a solution and that solution is called
0:46:35 Molku.
0:46:39 Molku uses AI to automatically transfer data from any document into a PDF.
0:46:44 And so if you need to turn a supplier invoice into a customer quote or move info from an application
0:46:49 into a contract, you just put a file into Molku and it auto fills the output PDF in seconds.
0:46:52 And a little backstory for all the tech nerds out there.
0:46:55 LaVon built the entire web app without using a line of code.
0:46:57 He used something called Bubble IO.
0:47:01 They’ve added AI tools that can generate an entire app from one prompt.
0:47:02 It’s pretty amazing.
0:47:06 And it means you can build tools like Molku very fast without knowing how to code.
0:47:10 And so if you’re tired of copying and pasting between documents or paying people to do that
0:47:12 for you, check out Molku.ai.
0:47:16 M-O-L-K-U dot A-I.
0:47:17 All right, back to the pod.
0:47:19 All right.
0:47:21 So let’s do, I’ll do Eric Leimann.
0:47:25 So for those who don’t know, Ramp is a company that does credit.
0:47:26 It’s like a basically a credit card for startups.
0:47:29 They’re worth something like $10 billion.
0:47:33 And I think they do $800 million in revenue.
0:47:36 Eric, who’s the founder and CEO, is 35 years old.
0:47:42 And it’s just absolutely breathtaking how fast they’ve built this company because I think
0:47:45 the company is only four or five years old.
0:47:46 Like it’s brand new still.
0:47:50 And my biggest takeaway, I had two takeaways.
0:47:54 The first is that he was so nice.
0:47:58 So if you Google Eric Leimann, nice, there’s all these posts that talk about how nice this
0:47:59 guy is.
0:48:00 But it’s very true.
0:48:01 Did you go home and do that?
0:48:03 Did you Google Eric Leimann, nice?
0:48:08 Well, I was like, surely everyone talks about like, like he was the kindest person I’ve ever
0:48:09 met.
0:48:13 Like when he looked at me, it was like I was the only one in the world that mattered
0:48:14 at that moment.
0:48:15 And like I talked to Ari.
0:48:18 I go, Ari, who Ari only talked to him on the cell phone.
0:48:21 And I go, Ari, was this guy the nicest guy you’ve ever met?
0:48:24 And he goes, when he talked to me, I fell in love.
0:48:26 Like I like I wanted to keep talking to him.
0:48:29 He felt it felt like I was the only one that mattered to him at that moment.
0:48:30 And he did such a good job.
0:48:36 And like he wrote a follow up email and he wrote like, I was truly blessed with by our conversation.
0:48:37 I’m so thankful.
0:48:37 Whatever.
0:48:39 He was so nice.
0:48:45 But what I found strange was you don’t meet people who are nice and intense.
0:48:47 And so I asked him a question about something.
0:48:52 He goes, look, Ramp is 2,053 days old and we’re only just now.
0:48:53 And I was like, wait, what did you just say?
0:48:56 He goes, yeah, Ramp is 2,053 days old.
0:49:01 And I was like, you know exactly to the day how old Ramp is?
0:49:01 He goes, yeah, of course.
0:49:04 Like I’m trying to get this done by this amount of time.
0:49:05 Like I know exactly to the day.
0:49:16 And I just found it very strange that you can be both incredibly intense at having a company and intense about life and also a very generous, kind, nice person.
0:49:19 Those two things typically are not in the same package.
0:49:24 And so my big takeaway with Eric was how you can be not a jerk.
0:49:30 You don’t have to be, you know, a big like pumping your chest, big ego, highly confident guy.
0:49:30 You can be very soft.
0:49:35 You can be really kind, but also a complete killer and savage.
0:49:37 It’s a weird dichotomy, but you can be both.
0:49:39 Yeah, I talked to him before.
0:49:40 I think I’ve told this story before.
0:49:43 I met him many years ago before he ever started Ramp.
0:49:45 And also super sweet guy.
0:49:50 And then what they, the other thing I’ve said before is I can’t believe Ramp won in that same way.
0:49:56 Because at the time I remember that Brex was, Brex looked like the runaway winner.
0:49:57 It was the YC company.
0:49:59 It was based in Silicon Valley.
0:50:00 It had raised a bunch of money.
0:50:02 I think it launched earlier than Ramp.
0:50:07 And it just seemed like Ramp, this company out of New York, just seemed like the natural second place winner.
0:50:11 And instead, Ramp has crushed it.
0:50:14 And actually Brex is the second place winner in that space or third or whatever.
0:50:16 And he had a whole answer to that.
0:50:22 So most people, when they start a company, it’s like it was cool or I had this problem or whatever.
0:50:28 He had a four point list where it was like, well, because I asked the same question.
0:50:29 I was like, you know, Brex was already around.
0:50:30 This was already around, whatever.
0:50:35 And he’s like, well, the Frank Dodd Act or something like that was passed, which meant this, this, and this.
0:50:40 And that also meant, and then he had like, it was a four point list and it was incredibly intentional.
0:50:45 And he’s like, I saw at Capital One, it took this many days to approve an account.
0:50:49 I figured if we could reduce that to only 7.3 days.
0:51:01 And since there’s this many potential businesses in the world, if we do that and we do this many businesses per day, it was like incredibly detailed and exact and precise way, which isn’t typically how I think about building a company.
0:51:05 A lot of times it’s like off energy or like vibes, like this feels a certain way.
0:51:07 He did not have that at all.
0:51:11 It felt like everything was like, it was very intense.
0:51:12 Amazing.
0:51:13 All right, let me do one now.
0:51:15 This is a more practical business one, I’ll say.
0:51:17 Was this with your brother-in-law?
0:51:18 Yeah, this is my brother-in-law Sanjeev.
0:51:30 Okay, so this episode, I think this one will have come out already, but in the middle of it, he tells the story where, okay, so the headline of this is this guy, basically my brother-in-law has built a real estate portfolio.
0:51:37 He owns basically over a billion dollars of real estate that he accumulated in about 10 years with no outside money.
0:51:41 And so he had like lenders, but no investors at the time.
0:51:42 He’s incredible.
0:51:44 He’s just like an absolute animal at what he does.
0:51:50 And I always knew he was smart and I always knew he was like really like ambitious and was like, you know, he’s just a winner.
0:51:51 That part I know.
0:51:52 I’ve known the guy for 10 plus years.
0:51:59 How about the fact that you’re as successful as you are and you’re second place in your own family?
0:52:01 Maybe third.
0:52:03 I think my wife’s dad is a pretty amazing guy too.
0:52:08 So, you know, he wins in not just the success way, but the guy’s a saint.
0:52:10 So, you know, he wins in his own way.
0:52:11 All right.
0:52:13 So what is it about this guy that I picked up?
0:52:22 So the short version of this story is he goes to law school, gets his MBA, first interns with a lawyer.
0:52:26 So he’s like working on actually the Scott Peterson case, like the Lacey Peterson or whatever.
0:52:29 And then he meets, but he also intern, he has two internships.
0:52:30 That’s one internship.
0:52:32 He has a second internship with a real estate guy.
0:52:35 He’s like, the real estate guy is always, you know, he’s at home at a good time.
0:52:36 He’s in his kid’s life.
0:52:37 He’s got passive income.
0:52:39 Like this seems like the better model.
0:52:40 I’ll go towards that.
0:52:41 So he goes to real estate.
0:52:44 He has no money and so he can’t buy any real estate.
0:52:45 So he starts off as a broker.
0:52:47 You know, he does his first deal, make 60K.
0:52:53 But by the time he’s like 25, 26, 27, he’s making millions of dollars a year as a broker.
0:52:56 He would like, he’d be like, cool, you got this empty space.
0:52:58 Let me lease it for you.
0:52:59 You want to sell this?
0:53:03 Let me buy, let me be your buy side broker and your sell side broker and I’ll lease it for you.
0:53:03 I’ll get all three.
0:53:04 I’ll bag all three commissions.
0:53:07 Somewhere along the way, he basically makes a mistake.
0:53:12 And he’s like, yep, this is where, you know, youth cats up, youth and like, you know, ego catches up with you.
0:53:15 So there’s this one guy who’s like, he’s like a jack in the box franchiser.
0:53:18 So he’s got like, I don’t know, 30 jack in the boxes or something like that.
0:53:22 And so my brother-in-law, Sanjeev, is doing deal after deal with him.
0:53:28 And so finally, the guy’s just like, at some point, instead of just leasing the place to him, the guy would say, I want to be over there.
0:53:30 So he’d say, okay, cool, I’ll buy it.
0:53:31 I’ll build it for you and then I’ll sell it to you.
0:53:33 So I’ll buy, I’ll develop it and I’ll sell it to you.
0:53:36 And the guy’s like, cool, I want these 20 locations.
0:53:41 So he goes and he, he takes out $15 million of debt to go buy 20 locations.
0:53:48 Like, you know, three days after it closes, you know, that guy gets popped for like, he didn’t pay his payroll taxes or something.
0:53:49 He goes to jail.
0:53:51 And so now my brother-in-law’s on the hook.
0:54:01 He bought, he borrowed $15 million and now has these 20 locations or whatever that need to be jack in the boxes that the deed is tied to that guy’s name.
0:54:02 That guy’s now in jail.
0:54:03 He can’t develop them.
0:54:06 So he’s basically kind of screwed and, um, you know, he doesn’t want to declare bankruptcy.
0:54:11 So he decides he’s going to try to pay off $15 million, even though he has nothing.
0:54:13 And so he’s like, okay, how do I do this?
0:54:16 So he’s, he’s just like depressed.
0:54:17 And his wife is like, you know what?
0:54:18 Like, I don’t know.
0:54:19 I’ve never seen you like this.
0:54:20 You need to go to the gym.
0:54:24 I don’t know what we’re going to do in business, but just go to the gym so that you, you know, get out of this funk.
0:54:31 And he goes to the gym and when he’s there, he, um, this guy, he, he always used to see working out there at night.
0:54:33 He used to work out at like 11 or midnight at night.
0:54:35 Cause like after work, he would go there.
0:54:39 But today he went there in the daytime cause he doesn’t have shit else to do.
0:54:42 And the guy who he always sees working out, he’s like behind the desk.
0:54:43 He’s like, yo, you work here?
0:54:45 He’s like, yeah, dude, I own the place.
0:54:46 He’s like, what?
0:54:49 And he’s like, he’s like, yeah, come check out the office.
0:54:51 And then when he’s there, the guy tells him like, he’s ready to sell.
0:54:52 He actually wants to sell the business.
0:54:59 And my brother-in-law works out a deal to basically buy the business from the guy with no money down because a little bit of money down.
0:55:06 He pawns his wife’s wedding ring and they go all in that, you know, they’re at this point, they’re living in their like parents, like his old childhood bedroom.
0:55:16 And they owe $15 million and they’re like, I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this pickle, but I’m going to basically, I’ll use the cashflow from this gym to just pay the monthly thing we owe.
0:55:18 And then we’ll try to open up a second gym maybe.
0:55:19 And we’ll figure out how we do this.
0:55:25 Anyways, he ends up building like the largest private gym chain, 82 gyms in California.
0:55:29 By the way, is your brother-in-law like really, is he jacked?
0:55:32 Yeah, he was one of the first like Indian bodybuilders basically in college.
0:55:36 So he was going to go pro and then like, you know, he decided not to like go full on.
0:55:38 But yeah, he was huge before.
0:55:41 He’s big now, but he’s like, oh, this is the deflated version of me.
0:55:43 And I was like, wow, that’s crazy.
0:55:47 So again, whatever this guy chooses, he does with like crazy intensity.
0:55:53 So with real estate, I’m like, so how did you, okay, all that you told me so far is the gym business.
0:55:54 Like how’d you do the real estate side?
0:55:55 So this is the business lesson.
0:56:00 So he’s like, you know, along the way, when I would go lease these gyms, I realized I had a little bit of leverage, right?
0:56:01 I’m coming in.
0:56:03 I’m like the big tenant in the shopping center.
0:56:07 And so I just added to the lease an option to buy.
0:56:13 And he’s like, I just added a no risk option, whereas I have the option to buy within five years or whatever.
0:56:15 I can buy this at $4 million.
0:56:18 And at the time, that sounded like a high price for the guy.
0:56:20 So the guy had no problem putting it in, free option.
0:56:25 And he’s like, and by the way, I have no money and no plans of how I would ever buy this place.
0:56:25 But why not?
0:56:30 Why not take an asymmetric bet where I have no downside, but I have possible upside.
0:56:36 And so his start in real estate was he’s working at the gym and a guy comes in to buy the building.
0:56:40 And the guy assumes that he owns the building, which he didn’t.
0:56:43 And he’s like, we would make an offer somewhere around the ballpark of $7 million.
0:56:46 And so he’s like, oh, amazing.
0:56:50 And he’s like, cool, I have an option to buy this for four, but I don’t have any money.
0:56:54 So I actually cannot physically buy this, but I’ll do a double escrow.
0:56:58 So if you agree to buy it on this date, it basically is like, I’ll sell this to you for seven.
0:57:00 I’ll take the seven.
0:57:01 I’ll give this guy four.
0:57:02 So I’ll own the place.
0:57:04 And then I’ll buy this and I’ll sell you this thing.
0:57:05 I’ll keep $3 million as my profit.
0:57:12 It’s the old, hey, mom says I can go if you say yes, or she’ll say yes if you say yes.
0:57:15 Right, exactly.
0:57:23 And so he got his, the entire empire that he built was because he baked in one asymmetric bet, one no risk option.
0:57:25 I thought that was kind of inspiring.
0:57:28 Like, you know, and by the way, he probably had 10 of these that didn’t pan out.
0:57:30 But the one that did got him his start.
0:57:36 He took that $3 million and then he used that to buy and buy and flip, buy and flip, buy and flip, buy and flip.
0:57:41 But he compounded that over 10 years into a billion dollars of real estate from that one option.
0:57:44 And I just thought that was just like an incredible lesson or takeaway to have.
0:57:47 And by the way, now, so I invest with him now.
0:57:52 So I’m able to like, it’s probably my biggest investment of the past two years has been investing in his deals.
0:57:54 And I’m just getting incredible returns.
0:57:57 And one of the reasons why is because he keeps doing the same model.
0:58:00 So he just, he’s the master of de-risking.
0:58:06 So he goes into a, let’s say there’s a shopping center with like, you know, two big vacancies.
0:58:11 So he’ll, while he’s putting it under purchase contract, he already has leased it.
0:58:14 He has a signed lease and a signed purchase contract.
0:58:18 So the same day we buy, he has the tenant in place and he sells the thing.
0:58:24 And so we get these incredible returns because he’s de-risking all these properties so far in advance.
0:58:29 It’s like a, it’s such a, like the same, it’s like, you know, you find one unfair advantage and then you just keep playing it.
0:58:31 Does he have an awesome house?
0:58:33 Oh, he’s got a crazy house.
0:58:34 His house is crazy.
0:58:38 Real estate guys always have obviously amazing houses.
0:58:41 There, there’s one other little hack that he had that I liked.
0:58:43 I think there’s another tidbit I think people can take.
0:58:48 So I was like, when he’s doing these things, I’m like, dude, how do you do this?
0:58:53 Like you were buying these properties there, you know, maybe there’s a vacancy or whatever.
0:58:58 And like, how are you cutting these deals beforehand to get them, you know, oh, I know the buyer at Trader Joe’s.
0:59:00 I know the buyer at whatever, Chipotle.
0:59:05 I know the buyer, the real estate guy at this place and I’ll get it under contract.
0:59:06 And he’s like, oh, it’s just relationships.
0:59:08 And he always just said this vague word.
0:59:09 Oh, it’s, you know, real estate’s a relationship business.
0:59:13 And I hate answers like that, that sound like general.
0:59:18 And so I dug in with him and I was like, I was like, tell me how you approach this idea of relationships.
0:59:19 And he said this great thing.
0:59:27 He was like, you know, if you think about the word commercial real estate, it sounds like this vast universe, like this huge industry, right?
0:59:31 He’s like, the trick is how do you make a big thing feel small?
0:59:36 Like, how do you break it down into an achievement, like into a chunk that you could actually, you know, you could actually digest.
0:59:42 So he’s like, kind of, he’s like, one day I sat down with a piece of paper and I realized, all right, who do I, who’s my ideal person to know?
0:59:51 He’s like, well, it’s a national retailer who’s still expanding and growing and they don’t want to own their own real estate because I’m a developer.
0:59:52 I want to own the real estate.
0:59:52 I want to lease it to them.
0:59:58 And he’s like, once I did that, I realized there’s actually like, I don’t know, 150 names.
1:00:03 And he’s like, I took this big idea of commercial real estate, which felt like an ocean.
1:00:07 And he’s like, I turned it into like a little goldfish pond, 150.
1:00:10 He’s like, I could, I could fit 150 people in this room.
1:00:14 I could meet 150 people over the next two years if I tried and I could form a relationship with them.
1:00:19 And I could, they could, I could get so that they know me and I know them and they’ll call me and I’ll call them when we have something that fits.
1:00:21 And that’s literally what he did.
1:00:38 And I just thought that was like a great, like, I don’t know how, I don’t know where else you could do that in other businesses, but I suspect that that idea of taking something big, but then reframing it and then realizing it’s actually much smaller and more achievable than you think is, um, is probably something that applies to a lot of businesses.
1:00:41 Is he a billionaire or billionaire ish?
1:00:43 I would say like ish, not, not, not there himself.
1:00:50 Right. Cause you know, if you own a billion dollars of real estate and his case, I think like 40 or 50% is equity and the other half is like debt.
1:00:54 So, you know, on paper, you know, that’s whatever, that’s, let’s say $500 million.
1:01:00 I don’t know. I’m just, I don’t know his actual thing to be clear, but like hundreds of millions of dollars net worth.
1:01:08 Of the six people that we talked about, five of them are there or give or take, give or take there.
1:01:12 And I just think that that’s, I think it’s crazy.
1:01:16 I think it’s crazy. I don’t know how many billionaires are in the world, five or 10,000.
1:01:20 I’m not sure. Whatever is like Forbes heads, I would like multiply it by like some number.
1:01:29 Uh, and it’s crazy that over the past 10 days we hung out with five of them or something like that and get to learn from these people.
1:01:36 And again, I don’t, I’m almost embarrassed when I say the name, my first million, because what I tell people, I’m like, you know, it’s actually, it’s not always about money.
1:01:38 It’s actually about like things greater than that.
1:01:49 And, um, because I do think life’s richer than just money, but it is interesting to be able to, uh, rub shoulders with people who are in the 0.001% of their field.
1:01:51 And it’s, it’s, we’re lucky.
1:01:59 Yeah. And also like, I think now we’re a little bit like, Oh, you know, it’s not about the money, but like us 10 years ago, very much.
1:02:02 It is about the main goals was like, yo, get that money, get that money.
1:02:04 And then figure out the money doesn’t make it.
1:02:05 Sure. I believe you.
1:02:07 It’s not the end all be all, but I still want it.
1:02:08 And I’m still going to try to get it.
1:02:09 I’m still going to try to make it happen.
1:02:11 It’s definitely, yeah, exactly.
1:02:14 It definitely seems pretty great to have, but I’d rather have it than not have it.
1:02:19 And, uh, so, you know, I think as much as we’re like, Oh, you know, like, I think both are true.
1:02:23 Like it is true that there’s a lot more to life, but also to these people.
1:02:28 And like, you know, you pick up a bunch of different things, but also it is kind of crazy to, to, to make that happen.
1:02:31 And, um, it’s fun also to make that happen.
1:02:35 You know, if, if, if business is your sport, well, how are points tallied?
1:02:37 They’re tallied in dollars, right?
1:02:40 There’s a guy, um, I don’t pay attention to golf, but I’m sure you do.
1:02:42 But do you know, Scotty, is it Schaefer Schaeffler?
1:02:45 Uh, he won, what did he win this weekend?
1:02:46 The U.S. Open or something?
1:02:47 I think the U.S. Open, yeah.
1:02:56 Uh, I don’t know anything about sports, but I know that I saw like his one-year-old kid, like crawling up the green to give him a hug and a kiss after he won.
1:02:58 So I guess Scotty like won.
1:03:03 He set the trophy on the ground and his kid crawls up, uh, to, to, to play with the trophy.
1:03:06 And Nike took out this amazing ad.
1:03:06 Oh, so good.
1:03:08 The best ad ever.
1:03:10 It was a two-page ad or two like swipes on Instagram.
1:03:14 The first one, it says a picture of Scotty holding his son.
1:03:16 And it says, you’ve already won.
1:03:21 And then the second slide is, but another major doesn’t hurt.
1:03:22 Doesn’t hurt.
1:03:31 Uh, and I think that’s, that’s kind of like the takeaway here is like, uh, yeah, it feels good to like, I, I’ve won already.
1:03:32 Like I have a loving family.
1:03:33 I feel secure.
1:03:36 It doesn’t hurt to, you know, succeed a little more.
1:03:38 And I thought that was such a great ad.
1:03:40 And I thought that was kind of a representation of this episode.
1:03:42 That was a beautiful ad, wasn’t it?
1:03:43 Oh my God.
1:03:46 Like Nike is at the top of its game when it does stuff like that.
1:03:47 Uh, it was pretty good.
1:03:48 Um, all right.
1:03:49 That was a good episode.
1:03:49 That’s it.
1:03:50 That’s the pod.
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