00:00:00
I think the greatest brand destruction over the last 18 months is the US brand abroad and AI. So with America, Trump
00:00:06
has been convinced that this was his defining moment of being known as the president that liberated the Middle
00:00:11
East. But I think the Trump administration will be known for criminal corruption and incompetence.
00:00:15
And that incompetence is bubbling up. And then the second greatest fall is AI. And also Sam Alman who's gone to the
00:00:22
dark side. And I'm an AI optimist. But here's what we fail to understand. These
00:00:26
techs, they do not have our best interests at heart. Scott, I often come to you to help myself form my opinions
00:00:32
on some of the most sort of consequential issues going on in the world. And when I look at some of the
00:00:36
quotes from the CEOs of these AI companies, I've got one here from Elon that says, "AI and robots will replace
00:00:40
all jobs." What's your view here? I think it's mostly the catastrophizing is
00:00:44
nothing more than thinly veiled attempt to say my technology is so devastating that it's going to shift society and you
00:00:50
should invest at this crazy valuation. And the data doesn't reflect that there's some big exogenous meteor coming
00:00:56
for the employment market. But I believe it's actually going to create more jobs
00:01:00
than it destroys. But the scary thing for me is that because of AI and because of these frictionless relationships that
00:01:06
people are engaging in online. I think a lot of young people are losing the ability to endure rejection. But I think
00:01:11
a more important technology in terms of how it's going to change the world and
00:01:14
what will create more shareholder value is not AI. It's really >> This is super interesting to me. My team
00:01:22
given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us according
00:01:26
to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you please could you check right
00:01:32
now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show
00:01:35
and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark
00:01:38
on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my
00:01:44
team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to
00:01:50
hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll
00:01:52
ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do.
00:01:56
I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder
00:02:00
and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that
00:02:04
promise since the very beginning of the D of Sio, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it.
00:02:10
Let's get on with the show. Scott, welcome back. I um I often come to you to help myself form my opinions
00:02:24
on some of the most sort of consequential issues going on in the world because I I find you always have a
00:02:29
very interesting perspective and one of the things that's been front of mind for
00:02:33
me and I think the audience as well is this subject of artificial intelligence. It's moving incredibly quickly. It feels
00:02:39
like a moving target. And I think I saw some stats the other day that said the subject of artificial intelligence is
00:02:45
less popular as like an industry than even ICE in the United States. Mhm. >> In part because the big CEOs of these
00:02:53
companies are saying that our jobs and our way of life is going to be fundamentally disrupted and people don't
00:02:58
feel like they have a say in that. We didn't choose this. >> What's your perspective on everything
00:03:02
that's going on? >> There have been few brands that have fallen further faster in the last 18
00:03:06
months than two brands. The United States brand abroad. We used to be the enforcer of the operating system to keep
00:03:12
rogue nations in check. The US is now that rogue nation. So the US brand abroad for the first time in history
00:03:19
more people feel that China is a force of good in the world than the US. That's
00:03:23
never happened before. So the brand US has fallen furthest fastest. The second greatest fall is AI. Your view of AI is
00:03:33
directly correlated to your wealth. The only cohort that has a positive rating of AI is people making over $200,000.
00:03:41
Because generally speaking, wealthy people look at AI as something that's fueling their portfolios and uh wealthy
00:03:49
people are the biggest users of AI. So they see it as a positive. They see it as innovation. They see it as the S&P
00:03:55
going up. But if you're an average middle class person, what you may see is that your electricity bills
00:04:02
have gone up and you don't even have access to invest in these companies. And
00:04:07
you see some statements from people Sam Alman saying, "Stop complaining about
00:04:12
energy costs. Think about the amount of energy it takes to raise a child." So
00:04:16
they haven't really managed the brand well. In the last 18 months, it's gone
00:04:20
from something kind of scary, but we can be optimistic and a wealth creator to something that's very scary and
00:04:26
something that's a wealth creator for the wealthiest already. The brand in the
00:04:29
last 18 months has had tremendous, tremendous erosion. When I look at some of the quotes from the CEOs of these AI
00:04:36
companies, I've got one here from Elon that says, "AI and robots will replace
00:04:39
all jobs. Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables instead of buying them from a store. The challenge
00:04:44
will be fulfillment. How do you derive fulfillment and meaning in life?" And
00:04:48
Sam Molman said, "By the end of 2028, more of the world's intellectual capacity could reside inside data
00:04:54
centers than outside them." And when I went through Sam's blog several times, I
00:04:59
mean, he's talking about a fairly dystopian future. And many of the CEOs are I mean even Amadea Enthropic talks a
00:05:05
lot about you know his his bare case for AI and the job disruption that will follow and so I think I'm trying to get
00:05:12
clarity for myself really on like what what is the truth what's marketing and
00:05:16
what's the truth and I want to add another point which is I hire a lot of people
00:05:20
>> and I'm already finding that our framework specifically for entry-level
00:05:23
roles >> y >> has has quite radically changed and so I didn't believe this stuff like a lot of
00:05:29
people told me about oh Sam Alman these guys they're doing marketing to make
00:05:31
their company seem powerful. But then when I noticed a change in my own behavior when I'm sifting through these
00:05:36
CVs, yeah, I thought, "Oh, maybe things are going to change." I think it's
00:05:41
mostly [ __ ] and catastrophizing and a means of fundraising. Every technology in history goes through a similar arc.
00:05:47
There's some catastrophizing, there's some job loss, that increase in productivity results in additional
00:05:53
margin, new business opportunities, and employment growth. I don't see any reason why this would be any different.
00:06:00
And I think that catastrophizing and talking about this massive destruction in jobs is a way of saying or justifying
00:06:06
the massive investments these companies want enterprises to make in their companies. Because if you look at the
00:06:11
amount of capital they have committed and the valuations of these companies, one of two things needs to happen in the
00:06:17
next 5 years at least in the US. There either needs to be a trillion dollars in incremental revenue from new products
00:06:22
from companies that have licensed AI. So L'Oreal does a big site license with say
00:06:26
open AI. Does it come up with new products? It's like how does it justify that investment? We're not seeing a lot
00:06:31
of AI moisturizer or cars that are built by AI. I mean, there's AI has hit industrialized robots at Amazon, but
00:06:39
there's not a lot you would call new AIdriven or AI products. AI plays a role
00:06:43
in the background, but it's very hard for companies right now to point to incremental growth or revenues from AI.
00:06:50
So, in order to justify these valuations, then they have to say, all right, there's going to be massive cost
00:06:56
savings or efficiencies. And there's some examples. I think Meta Meta has just announced new layoffs because of
00:07:02
efficiencies they're getting with AI targeting. So, one of two things needs to happen in the next three three years.
00:07:07
Either these companies valuations need to be cut by 50 or 70%. Or you need a massive destruction in the labor market
00:07:14
that creates tons of efficiencies that their customers can then flow to the bottom line. And I think what the CEOs
00:07:20
are saying is that there's going to be massive efficiencies. I also think that
00:07:23
you sound more interesting and it makes your technology sound more seinal when you say it's changing the world and we
00:07:30
don't know how to control it. And quite frankly, I find it a little bit obnoxious
00:07:34
that some of the founders in key figures in AI catastrophize just about the time
00:07:39
they take a secondary and peace out to the Kotazura. That's not helpful. I'm
00:07:42
I'm Dr. Frankenstein and I've created this monster, but I don't know how to
00:07:46
deal with it. So, I'm going to go peace out to Sanrope. That's just not very
00:07:49
helpful. They always talk about the peril. It's like, well, what do you mean
00:07:52
by that? So, the first the first big fear catastrophizing is just this unprecedented job destruction. They've
00:07:59
been talking about that for three years, but let's look at the data. The unemployment rate in the US is 4 and a
00:08:04
half%. Among youth, it's 8.8%. That is slightly below the historical average. The number of new business
00:08:13
permits or new businesses started per capita in the United States has doubled in the last 10 years. And we hear about,
00:08:20
well, what about Meta? They announced they were laying off I think eight or 10,000 people yesterday. 2019 to 2025
00:08:26
they went from 16,000 people to 80. So even if they go back to 60,000 it takes them back to it takes them back about 24
00:08:33
months. So I don't doubt that there'll be a real dip or a severe V down in
00:08:39
certain industries, customer service, probably the legal field. But I believe over the medium and the long term it's
00:08:45
actually going to create more jobs than it destroys. And I don't I think some of
00:08:49
the catastrophizing is nothing more than thinly veiled attempt to say my technology is so devastating that it's
00:08:56
going to shift society and you should invest at this crazy valuation. Could you be wrong? Oh 100 I'm wrong all the
00:09:02
time, Stephen. No, but I mean like what's the what's what would have to be
00:09:05
the case for you to find out that you were wrong in terms of how you've reasoned up from the first principles of
00:09:10
your thinking there? >> Job destruction, layoffs. >> But what would you have misunderstood
00:09:14
for that to be the case? like what what did you miss would you have uh misestimated for that to be the case?
00:09:20
>> Ground zero for the job that was going to go go away was radiologists. You
00:09:24
could scan billions of images and radiologists kid mama don't let your your daughter
00:09:30
grow up to be a radiologist cuz that job's going away. The new job listings for radiologists in 2026 is up because
00:09:37
what it ends up is that while scanning the image is important, it's a small part of the job. The value out of a
00:09:43
radiologist is diagnosing the illness and then coming up with a treatment plan. And that's as important as ever.
00:09:49
The number of coders, job listings for coders yearon year is up 11%. So people who understand how to use these
00:09:56
technologies and come up with different prompts or different means of vibe coding that demand has gone up because
00:10:02
now AI can be applied to almost any startup. Where I will be wrong is if there is sustained job destruction and
00:10:08
the new jobs created and new businesses and the employment those jobs create doesn't keep up with new jobs. And there
00:10:15
is a scenario you don't need 100% unemployment like Musk is predicting. At 20% unemployment the French had a
00:10:22
revolution in Weimar Germany turned very ugly. At 20% unemployment especially among youth especially young men tend to
00:10:28
get very angry and take to the streets. So you could see a V that's so severe
00:10:33
even if there's a job recovery if it hits 20% unemployment that could cause real uh civil unrest. But I just look at
00:10:41
the data. I look at the employment numbers. If you didn't know there was this seminal technology that very smart
00:10:47
people were predict predicting a job apocalypse around and you just looked at the data, you wouldn't know there's
00:10:52
anything going on there. the the data doesn't reflect that there's some big
00:10:57
exogenous meteor meteor coming for the employment market. Is there a case that this technology because it's you know
00:11:04
built on the internet so it has inherent rapid distribution every day anthropic release a model chat release something
00:11:11
it spreads across the world very quickly and everybody's updating their technology at the speed of light unlike
00:11:16
the industrial revolution where you had to build infrastructure and physical infrastructure is there a case that
00:11:20
because of the speed of this technology and the proliferation of it that it will
00:11:24
be unlike the revolutions of the past >> right that's the fear that the V is so
00:11:29
severe >> and so vicious that we don't have time to recover and even if there is more
00:11:33
jobs on the other side that there's too much civil unrest around around the V.
00:11:38
But so far the V doesn't be decelerating or diving as quickly as people had predicted. I was kind of reminiscing on
00:11:45
the way over here. I moved here almost four years ago. The first thing I did I got off a plane at night and I went to
00:11:52
this amazing party at Annabelle's this Brazilian party with all these hot people everywhere and I thought I love
00:11:57
London. And the next morning I woke up feeling pretty hung over and my team said, "You have this podcast with this
00:12:04
young guy." And I said, "Cancel, I'm hung over." And they said, they said,
00:12:08
"No, he's really up and coming. He'll like him. He's a nice kid." And I came
00:12:13
into this little place in Shortitch or wherever with all these like cool coffee houses. I had no idea who you were. And
00:12:20
within two years, you were [ __ ] everywhere. It was like I'm in the airport and I see your banner on your
00:12:26
book. And then I get on the plane and the safety video has you in it. I'm like, make him stop. And my point is
00:12:33
where I'm going with this is this place is like uh I mean it feels like the Google Plex. You're hiring like crazy.
00:12:41
You're one of the most technically sophisticated people I know in media and yet you're hiring a bunch of organic
00:12:49
things, walking around and eating and and going out and drinking and having kids. So you're you're the example. Old
00:12:56
media is going to lose jobs, but you're creating how many people have you hired
00:13:01
in the last 24 months >> across all of our companies? About I'd say about 220.
00:13:06
>> Okay. And those are high-paying jobs. Those are young people probably making
00:13:10
six figures plus. That's a lot of employment. So is the BBC or is the Daily Mail or whatever laying off
00:13:16
people? Yeah. But I'm not sure they're laying off people faster than you're
00:13:19
hiring them. >> Yeah. And what I found is that we're hiring a different type of uh person and
00:13:23
AI fluency is becoming increasingly important. I say the other thing is the only thing I noticed was 60 days ago I'm
00:13:30
I consider myself to be head of recruitment. We have a recruitment team downstairs and I own a recruitment
00:13:34
business. But as I go through that inbox people that I otherwise two months ago ago would have been you
00:13:41
know jumping to hire, I'm now pausing because there's new technology that's
00:13:46
been launched by these companies in America. That means there's alternative solutions and that's what's giving me
00:13:51
pause. People do need to consider ways that they can upskill themselves with these technologies.
00:13:57
>> The labor market is definitely reshaping and it might reshape faster, but I'm not
00:14:01
sure it's going to be the apocalypse. There'll be winners and losers. For
00:14:03
example, for the last 30 or 40 years, the unemployment rate among college grads has been lower than non-ol grads. It's
00:14:11
shifted this year. The unemployment rate among non-ol grads because of the boom in vocational work is now lower than the
00:14:17
unemployment rate among college grads. >> Mhm. >> And if you think about it, you're like,
00:14:21
okay, well, that's bad for new college grads. But at the same time, all of these data centers need carpenters,
00:14:28
welders, plumbers. So, there's been booms in other parts of the employment market. But yeah, the employment
00:14:33
market's absolutely reshaping. But when I graduated from business school, a lot
00:14:38
of it, quite frankly, is your generation is spoiled. What do I mean by that? When
00:14:42
I graduated from Berkeley in 1992, 40% of us had a job on graduation day. Meaning 60% did not have a job. I would
00:14:49
bet that kids in my class at Stern, I bet 40% of them were starting their own business
00:14:55
>> because with AI when I graduated, there were two there were two entrepreneurs in
00:14:59
my class and the second person was my co-founder. We were the only business started in the high school of business
00:15:05
from 1992. I would bet there's going to be 30 to 50 businesses that are started
00:15:10
on graduation day. There's kids dropping out of their second year of business
00:15:14
school to start businesses because they just raised $10 million in a series A. Now, you have to have certain skills, a
00:15:20
certain type of personality, a certain facility with technology. I'm actually
00:15:24
quite excited about this. We're starting to see an uptick in productivity, which
00:15:28
should result in incremental um profitability. Will some people be on the wrong side of the trade? Absolutely.
00:15:34
Do we need to do a better job of providing more unemployment, more retraining? Denmark spends 2% of GDP on
00:15:40
retraining and vocational training. We spent 2% in the US. So, we're not good
00:15:45
at retraining. We're really bad at it, actually. We're not good at taking care
00:15:49
of the people on the wrong side. But as a global in terms of global employment, I just don't I think that
00:15:54
catastrophizing is is dressed up fundraising. >> What do you think about what Elon's
00:16:00
doing with um Optimus? Because if you bring those two forces together, you got Optimus robots, these humanoid robots
00:16:06
where he says there'll be I mean some of the quotes that he said, I mean it might
00:16:10
be marketing, but he's predicting that you won't need to be a surgeon because
00:16:14
there'll be so many Optimus robots that are more advanced than any surgeon on
00:16:17
earth. So Optimus robots will be doing surgery. Um, and if you combine intelligence with sort of physical um,
00:16:25
physical power that comes from these robots, it does beg the question where human skills remain outside of the
00:16:32
relational stuff and Maslo serving Maslo Maslo's hierarchy of needs. That's the
00:16:36
one of the things I contend with. I'm like, you're seeing in China especially
00:16:40
how robots are really changing production lines. And I saw this video the other day of I think it was in India
00:16:46
or Bangladesh where they had their factory workers have cameras on their heads. >> Yeah.
00:16:51
>> So that they could film their hands because they're they're intent on
00:16:54
replacing them with robots. >> Yeah. >> This combination of intelligence plus
00:16:58
robotics feels like >> it's two tsunamis at the same time. >> I think that's right. But let's use the
00:17:04
surgeon as an example. I think the robot in the context of surgery will be not a
00:17:09
replacement but a supplement. and that is there'll be a large class of surgeons
00:17:13
who know how to weaponize robotics to be better surgeons and quite frankly do two
00:17:17
surgeries a day instead of one. I think most brain surgeries take four or six hours using robotics and precision
00:17:24
instruments. A great neurosurgeon will be able to increase the productivity and the accuracy of their surgeries. My big
00:17:31
tech stock pick of 25 was Alphabet cuz it was trading at a P of 17. I just saw it as being ridiculously cheap cuz
00:17:37
everyone thought OpenAI was going to put it out of business. My big tech stock pick for 26 is Amazon because I think
00:17:42
where robotics really hit the rubber meets the road in terms of shareholder value is the collision of AI and
00:17:48
industrialized robots and there are 400,000 um industrialized robots in the US and there's a million at Amazon. So
00:17:57
million Amazon has two and a half times the number of industrialized robots as the rest of the nation combined. But the
00:18:04
notion that we're going to have someone in our house bringing our tea a robot, I
00:18:07
don't buy that at all. I think that automated robotics, the collision of advanced manufacturing in China and
00:18:13
using AI with robotics will yield tremendous advantage. Amazon is saying they're going to double their largest
00:18:20
business, which is their retail business by 2032 without an incremental hire using robotics, industrialized robots.
00:18:26
And they were early. They made an acquisition 1015 years ago of a robotics company called KA. But the notion that
00:18:33
there's going to be a robot bringing me my tea here. Oh, that's [ __ ] The
00:18:37
scary thing for me that I'd want to know more about is weaponized uh industrialized robots as warriors
00:18:43
because I wonder, you know, there's just you can go some weird places, but again,
00:18:47
I think AI and robotics, yes, this notion that we're going to have robots serving us our food or in our house, I
00:18:55
don't I don't see that. It's interesting because well I guess one could argue
00:18:59
that we we already have robots in our houses but they just don't move. So the
00:19:03
quite the leap really is would you allow a robot to move through your house? Because I mean a Hoover is a robot. A
00:19:07
fridge is kind of like a robot especially the smart fridge is you one could say a TV is a robot a smart TV but
00:19:12
the the difference is they don't move through our house or would we allow the
00:19:16
Hoover to move itself and then once we allow that would we allow it to potentially bring us something?
00:19:20
>> Yeah, I get it. I just don't the the stuff I've seen on actual application of
00:19:24
these robots and keep in mind these individuals the job of the CEO now is it used to be to underpromise and overd
00:19:30
deliver. Now it's to overpromise and underdel and create a vision that creates cheap capital so you can pull
00:19:36
the future forward. My understanding is three years ago we had a million autonomous Tesla taxis on the road and
00:19:40
that did not happen. In 2016 Mus said or 2017 there was going to be autonomous was two years away driving. So their job
00:19:49
is to predict a very exciting future. I also think Musk in particular is very good at saying look over here as he
00:19:55
stuffs a rabbit into a hat. I mean Tesla is an automobile company so he's got to
00:19:59
create a stories to justify its 155 times earnings when most automobile companies trade at 10 or 15. So it's
00:20:07
robots it's space it's connectivity with AI and autonomous and robots. It's
00:20:13
constantly look over here because I think it's very difficult to justify the
00:20:16
valuations he's raising money at. So, and to be clear, he as much as anybody
00:20:21
is able to pull that vision forward. He's launched 90% of the rockets sent into space have been by SpaceX, but this
00:20:27
is a company that's trading that has $16 billion in revenue with 8 billion in
00:20:32
profits and it's going to go out in its IPO at a projected valuation of 90 to
00:20:37
110 times revenues. When Google went public, it went out at 10 times revenues and it was growing 10 times as fast. So,
00:20:43
what is this? The key attribute of an innovator right now is storytelling. And that is to make sure the promise is way
00:20:50
ahead of the performance such you can access cheap capital and pull the future forward. But a lot of this stuff I find
00:20:56
is a lot of jazz hands. He's always he's you know he's often known for being
00:21:00
wrong about his timelines. But he does seem to deliver magic to the world. >> The best product in my mind, the two the
00:21:07
two products that have changed my life from a technology standpoint, most underrated product is AirPods.
00:21:13
If AirPods alone, you know, Tim Cook just stepped down were its own product. It'd be a Fortune50 company. I think
00:21:19
it's I don't even think it's technology. I think it's the most profitable
00:21:23
ubiquitous piece of jewelry in history. I just walk around with them in my ears now, right? And then the best product I
00:21:29
think of the last few years has been Starlink. >> That's amazing. >> I just think it's absolutely I've done
00:21:34
podcasts from planes. I can talk to my sons on FaceTime. That product is, you know, all airlines are flying the same
00:21:42
tin can, same routes, same bad food, a real point of differentiation for them and also in maritime. I think Starlink
00:21:50
is the best tech product. So, power to him. When they go public, is it an is SpaceX an amazing company or is it
00:21:57
overvalued? The answer is yes. Two can be true at the same time. >> What do you think of Tesla? Because for
00:22:03
me it's magic. I don't think people in Britain realize this or other parts of
00:22:06
the world, but for me the first time I got in the Tesla that I I got in LA and pressed the location and took my hands
00:22:13
off the wheel. All I had to do is occasionally look look forward, which they're removing now. And it took me 3
00:22:19
and a half hours to Joshua Tree without any intervention. >> And the safety record in it is is safer
00:22:25
than if I had driven myself there. >> It's just magic to me. And then when I
00:22:29
watched this, the space rockets come down and be caught with the chopsticks. Incredible.
00:22:32
>> How this is just magic. >> Incredible. >> And so when when he I've got to be
00:22:35
honest, when he says that these Optimus robots are going to be I I go, do you know what
00:22:40
>> he's delivered a lot of magic in the past that no one would have thought
00:22:43
possible. Can you even imagine 10 years ago him saying that what people would have said if he said, "We're going to
00:22:48
launch this massive sort of 70ft skyscraper into the air and then we're going to catch it on chopsticks."
00:22:53
Staggering. Incredible. >> And then we're going to relaunch it again and then we're going to catch it
00:22:56
again. >> You would have gone impossible. >> Edison of our generation. But you asked
00:23:01
about Tesla. Uh, I bought a Tesla. Incredible product, far superior to anything on the
00:23:07
market. He deserves credit for inspiring the EV race, which will be good for the
00:23:11
environment. But the reality is everyone's caught up. The fastest growing automobile company in history is
00:23:17
BYD. BY company >> BYYD is basically an 80% of a Tesla. Some people would say 100% of a Tesla
00:23:23
for 40% of the price. If there weren't ter if there wasn't a ridiculous tariff
00:23:27
war right now BYYD I think would be the number one EV in the United States it's
00:23:31
eating Tesla's launch in addition what I think is going to happen about Tesla
00:23:36
credit where it's due change the market inspired the EV race good for good for
00:23:40
the planet but when you look at its valuation right now I think what you're going to see is when SpaceX goes public
00:23:45
there's a lot of money in the market that wants to get some of that Musk RZ what you were talking about this guy is
00:23:54
incredible I I don't care how expensive it is. I want to invest behind Elon Musk. I get it. That money is about to
00:24:00
come out of Tesla, which people are finally figuring out is just a great car company that should be trading at 30
00:24:05
times earnings, not 150. And it's going to go into SpaceX. So, I think the boost, the retail surge in SpaceX you're
00:24:13
going to see, and the valuation they're planning to go out at is just extraordinary. Some of that is going to
00:24:18
come at the cost of Tesla. I just I think people are waking up to the fact that Tesla's a great auto company. It
00:24:24
should be trading at about a fifth of the valuation it is. Now >> on that point, what jobs do you think
00:24:28
will be impacted by AI? I've heard you talk about logistics and transport. Um I
00:24:34
think London have just announced that Whimo and Tesla's full self-driving technology are on the way. They've
00:24:38
greenlighted Whimo, for example. >> I'd hate to be a truck driver. To me, a
00:24:42
long haul truck driver is the first place. Trucks can drive between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. when there's no
00:24:49
traffic on the road. I don't think it's a very good job. What's interesting
00:24:51
about or one of the things interesting about truck drivers, it's the biggest
00:24:54
employer of non- high school grads in America of non- high school graduate males. It's the biggest employer. It's
00:25:00
actually one of the two or three I think biggest jobs by number of people in the
00:25:03
United States. I would think within 10 years we're going to have very few long
00:25:06
haul truckers. Obviously, customer service, it feels like that will likely go away.
00:25:11
>> Yeah. But where I see job destruction in my world is that I used to anytime I got
00:25:17
an agreement from anybody, an advertiser for a contract, an employment agreement,
00:25:21
whatever it is, I'd send it to my lawyer and say, "Can you review this?" And
00:25:24
because the bills, there's latency in the bills, it probably cost somewhere between 400 bucks and 2,000 to review
00:25:30
every contract, right? Because I'm I'm a narcissist and I think I signal by
00:25:35
having a name brand law firm. And so they hire some kid at 120 or 80 to 120 bucks an hour and they charge me 4 to
00:25:41
500. Right now I say to the person in charge of that project and they say, "Well, I'm sending it the contract
00:25:47
review to our lawyer." I'm like, "No, no, no, no. Put it put the agreement.
00:25:51
Describe what we're looking for. Ask Claude or uh Chat GPT to pretend it's a
00:25:56
$1,200 lawyer, an hour lawyer, employment lawyer or contract lawyer, and ask them to review this document,
00:26:03
redline it, and do the same thing at another LLM." and then you make those changes. Congratulations, you are now a
00:26:09
senior associate at a law firm. I probably spend a hundred or $300,000 a year on legal fees across my
00:26:16
organization. I think I'll cut that easily by a third this year. So, that's
00:26:20
one way I see it. >> But I have a podcast company, not nearly the industrial behemoth this thing is,
00:26:26
but I keep asking everybody, how do we use AI to do this? And I find that they're getting better at it and it
00:26:34
enhances our work, but we're still hiring. Again, I think it's a supplement. And if you want to protect
00:26:40
against AI, it's pretty easy. I've said this for a while. AI is not going to
00:26:44
take your job. Someone who understands AI is going to take your job. So, what I tell people is have a second screen. And
00:26:49
that is always have a second screen open that has nothing but AI on it, LLMs. And
00:26:54
anything you get digitally, >> port it into your AI screen and start playing with it. Do you know that quote
00:26:59
is so interesting because I've heard that quote a lot that AI won't take your
00:27:01
job someone that understands AI will take your job and I as you said it then I thought you know I was thinking about
00:27:06
different um roles in my team and my open roles that we haven't hired for and
00:27:11
I thought >> someone with AI will take your job but they won't just take one job
00:27:16
they'll take five of those jobs and so if you think about an analyst >> right
00:27:20
>> we've got Molly downstairs analyst for my investment fund we were well intent
00:27:23
on hiring maybe five analysts for my second fund we only need Molly now because Molly's He's got two agents that
00:27:29
she works with in two two Mac minis and she's got a a setup that screens the
00:27:34
inbound interest and also goes proactively into the market looking for new opportunities and pulls them back
00:27:38
into her runs them through a framework scores them prepares them for the IC. So Molly enabled by AI, she's probably
00:27:45
taken out five jobs. And this is I think even with the law example, that that lawyer that's using these models um
00:27:52
probably doesn't need to have five junior lawyers now um if they're really
00:27:56
really competent with and if you think about an executive assistant. >> Mhm.
00:28:00
>> So with executive assistants, we might for our executives would have hired
00:28:03
maybe probably 10 um EAS in total. Mhm. >> Now, you really need one that has is
00:28:09
powered by a to do all the travel, one that does all of the scheduling, and then one that meets people at the door.
00:28:14
>> So, you need three versus potentially 10. And this is kind of what I'm saying.
00:28:18
Um, in most roles, but not all of them. There are still some roles when I looked
00:28:21
at the rogue chart where I go, actually, you know, this sales, a lot of the sales
00:28:25
we do from a media perspective are take someone for lunch, whine and dine, call them, relationships, pitch the deck.
00:28:31
>> Those kinds of things seem to be completely un uh untouched. But let's
00:28:36
continue down that path. You no longer need five mollies than you'd want. >> Yeah.
00:28:40
>> That creates additional EBIT margin. Creates a more profitable diary of a CEO
00:28:44
empire means you can raise more money and then you go buy more podcasts or invest in them who hire more people. So,
00:28:50
>> and it creates a faster cycle of money and new ideas and when we were walking
00:28:54
in here, you're talking about acquiring podcasting and you're getting into CPG
00:28:58
and you're getting into different forms of media and you're driving growth and
00:29:01
innovation. Will some people be on the wrong end of it? My mom was a secretary. She started as a typist. Typus went
00:29:08
away. She oversaw the the the secretarial typist pool at a law school downtown and I worked in the mail room
00:29:13
in high school. But my mom realized that the hard part of her job was interacting
00:29:18
with the senior level executive and she became an executive assistant and she never made a lot of money but she made
00:29:24
good money. Realizing the typing was the easy part of her job. The hard part was
00:29:27
managing some dude's life. Right. >> So accounting should go away. But what
00:29:33
you're saying is there's actually more accountants this year than there was
00:29:35
last year because accountants, the smart ones, are moving into wealth management
00:29:38
and tax optimization, which keeps getting more and more complicated. So yeah, do you have an onus to update your
00:29:45
skills to understand new? I remember when I first moved to New York and they hired an assistant for me and she came
00:29:50
in and said, "Oh, I don't use computers." And I'm like, "Well, you
00:29:53
can't work here." So it's like it to say you're not going to learn AI or at least
00:29:57
the basics on how to use it. It's like being in 1998 and saying, "Well, I don't
00:30:01
use PCs." Mhm. >> So I don't Yeah, you got to update your skills. The cycle times decreasing. A
00:30:07
lot of people will find themselves on the wrong side of the trade. I have to force myself to use AI. I don't, you
00:30:12
know, I'm the part of your brain around understanding new technologies begins to
00:30:17
die, right? I can no longer perceive a calendar. I can't tell you what I have
00:30:21
next. For some reason, I used to be able to do fant I could do a Scotsman accent,
00:30:26
Stephen, like no one's business a few years ago. That part of my brain has died. And when I try to do an accent, it
00:30:31
sounds like a dead language that twins speak to each other and it offends everybody. There's parts of your brain
00:30:36
that die. And the part that where you can understand new technologies or at least have the will to learn them starts
00:30:41
to go away as you get older. I have to force myself to play with these new technologies. Everyone who wants to make
00:30:48
more money or wants to hold on to their job should have the same onus to learn these new skills.
00:30:53
>> On that individual level, there's people listening now that that want to make
00:30:56
sure that they have the skills, their kids have the skills of the future, right? What are some of those important
00:31:00
skills? I mean, you've got kids. What do you What would you say to them? >> I get asked that all the time. What is
00:31:04
the skill? So, the honest answer is I have a view, but nobody knows. Do you realize 10 years ago in private schools,
00:31:10
the biggest incremental investments in curriculum were two things? Computer science and Mandarin.
00:31:16
>> How's that worked out? Like, thank God my kid knows Mandarin. I mean, said
00:31:21
nobody right now, but they thought it was going to be computer science. And you could argue that hasn't worked out
00:31:26
as well as everyone thought. I would say that the enduring skill is storytelling
00:31:31
and that is that your ability to look at data, create a narrative arc and then communicate that story in a compelling
00:31:36
way via all the different mediums >> whether it's podcasting I think you have
00:31:40
to write well to be a great storyteller but if you think about the most successful people in the world at the
00:31:45
end of the day they're usually storytellers the great CEOs I read Jeff Bezos's 1997 letter to shareholders
00:31:52
where he focused on those three principles and I'm like take my money right I see even a guy like Alex Karp at
00:31:58
Palunteer walking around doing a live earnings call on his phone. It's very compelling. Um Jensen Hang, you know,
00:32:06
when he does these giant Buffett-like stadiums where he gets up and he's like
00:32:10
a rockstar. That's storytelling. Technology is, I think, going to create a equalization among the product.
00:32:17
Reverse engineering created parity among manufactured products. I think most technology are technologies are going to
00:32:22
converge and we're seeing that convergence in AI models. So I think the point of differentiation is
00:32:27
relationships, right? Do I want to work with this person? Do I know about their kids? Do I like them? At the end of the
00:32:32
day, I have three different law firms pitching me business, three different investment banks, three different CRM
00:32:39
companies. Who do I have the best relationship with and who do I want to work with? So storytelling, it sounds
00:32:45
very p, but the ability to establish strong relationships with other sentient beings. I still believe that everything
00:32:51
reverse engineers to biology. I think a certain fundamental understanding of the
00:32:56
sciences, those seem to be pretty enduring. You know, my my oldest said he wanted to be a marine biologist. I'm
00:33:02
like, who are you kidding? You got seasick. I mean, at 18, what you want it? You want them to be smart, good
00:33:08
people, aggressive, support them becoming their own person, which I've had trouble with. I want them to be mini
00:33:13
me. And then helping them find something they're great at. But telling your kid,
00:33:19
"No, you need to go into this because this is where the future's going." Nope,
00:33:22
we don't know. I We have We know the basics. I would want my kid to be able to write well, to be able to look
00:33:28
someone in the eye, to be competitive. You know, I I encourage them to play sports, to do chores, which they do none
00:33:34
of. But other than that, I don't know. What do you think are going to be the
00:33:40
skills of the future? I think it's really difficult to know. >> I think what you said about
00:33:43
relationships is really important. You said storytelling, and I think storytelling is a proxy of of sales and
00:33:48
persuasion. And whether that's persuading an investor to believe in you or people to come and work for you or
00:33:53
customers to come and buy your thing. So I think I think storytelling and sales is is going to be an enduring skill. The
00:34:01
skill that is the biggest threat that people are young people are losing especially young men and this is a skill
00:34:06
and it's hugely underrated is the ability to endure rejection. And because of AI and because of these
00:34:13
frictionless relationships that people are engaging in online, I think a lot of young people, especially young men, are
00:34:20
losing the perseverance, endurance, willingness to hear no. Whether it's expressing friendship, whether it's
00:34:27
applying for a job you're not qualified for, whether it's approaching someone
00:34:31
and expressing romantic interest, I think a lot of young people, especially young men, I think they can have a
00:34:35
frictionless relationship online and are they're losing this sense of resilience
00:34:39
and aggressiveness. Uh, so I think that skill when I mentor young men, the first
00:34:45
skill I try to reinccorporate back into their life is what I call no. And that is I need you to go out. I need you to
00:34:50
go put yourself in the agency of strangers, whether it's a church group, a sports league, a riding class, and I
00:34:56
want you to make an overture, an expression of friendship. Hey, do you want to grab the Arsenal game or watch
00:35:00
come over my house and watch it? And then most of these kids, when you ask them what they want, they usually want
00:35:05
two things. The men I mentor, they want to move out of their parents house and they want a girlfriend. And so once we
00:35:10
do the friend approach, then I say, "Okay, find someone you may be potentially interested in. Ask them out
00:35:15
for coffee." And this is the goal. The goal is no. Because what's going to
00:35:19
happen is you might get a no. Probably going to get a no. And then I'm going to
00:35:22
call you the next day and I'm going to say, "Are you okay?" And the answer is
00:35:25
going to be yes. Is he or she okay? The person who said no. Yeah, they're fine.
00:35:29
Because And I'm I'm boasting. The secret to my success is rejection. I ran for
00:35:36
sophomore, junior, and senior class president of my high school. I lost all three times and based on my track
00:35:40
record, I decided to run for senior body or student body president where I went on to get this lose. Never bothered me.
00:35:47
I mean, I mourned and I moved on. Every entrepreneur, how many nos have you gotten?
00:35:51
>> Oh, [ __ ] hell. Yeah, more so than anybody. >> I mean, so the any person you look at
00:35:55
and think that person has made more money than I would have thought or any person who's hanging out with someone
00:36:00
much higher character and hotter than them has one thing in common. They either have very rich parents or more
00:36:05
likely. >> They're they're comfortable with no. So, and unfortunately, I think young people,
00:36:11
especially young men, are becoming less and less resilient to know. Apply for jobs you're not qualified for. Apply to
00:36:18
graduate programs you shouldn't get into. Approach people who you perceive as being cooler and hotter than you. And
00:36:23
express friendship and romantic interest. That is the key. You want to punch above your weight class, get out a
00:36:28
big spoon and get ready to eat [ __ ] That is the only thing that is common across all great entrepreneurs who are
00:36:34
self-made is they have the ability to mourn and move on. >> I've been thinking about this a lot
00:36:39
lately. It was inspired by listening to Adam Newman on that podcast a couple of uh a couple of weeks ago. He did one
00:36:44
with um Rick Rubin I think it was and and in it he tells the story of sitting in the back of the cab with Massa who's
00:36:50
the the owner of SoftBank and ask he was going to ask him to give him $300 million and Massa turns to him and says
00:36:57
you're just not ambitious enough. And he says by the time that 23minute cab drive
00:37:02
had finished, Massa had offered him 4 billion and he had signed a little napkin thing that Massa had in the back
00:37:07
of the cab. And that story and other stories like it have inspired have made me realize that like some of the game in
00:37:13
life and success is what I now call selling yourself long and most of us go through our lives selling ourselves
00:37:19
short. And I think in part because we don't see ourselves on an exponential curve. We see ourselves as a fixed
00:37:24
state. This is who I am. This is what I'm worth. But you've almost got to like
00:37:27
factor in your own expon exponential improvement. If you take you from 21 to now, how your intelligence and wisdom
00:37:33
and connections have all compounded. But you would have sold yourself at the value of you at 21 years old. So I'm now
00:37:40
I actually now think in every season of my life I've sold myself short. When I
00:37:44
was 18 years old, my I sold 20% of my company for 5K, $5,000. And then I thought that was I couldn't
00:37:50
believe it. I was celebrating in my room at the time. I was stealing Chicago Town
00:37:53
pizzas to feed myself. And then a couple of years later, I sold another 30% of that company uh 30% of my company for
00:37:58
300k and I thought I'd hit the euromillions, >> right? >> That company ran up and was on the stock
00:38:03
market for many hundreds of millions many years later. I thought, God, I've sold myself short my whole life. So
00:38:07
assume I'm doing the same now. And if I if I assume that, how how what would I say? What would I what
00:38:15
what opportunities would I go for? And I think that app for me that apply should
00:38:19
apply to everybody. I think it's self-fulfilling. >> Yeah. I there's something about
00:38:23
imagining where you want to be in 5 years outrageously in the reverse engineering back. But the moment you
00:38:28
took that 300K, you really needed it. I mean that was so it's a function of your
00:38:33
opportunity set and what's actually the market says to you. Uh I think pricing
00:38:37
is a signal. I struggle with pricing and what I tell whenever we're writing a
00:38:42
proposal or okay whatever I get back I'm like okay increase the pricing 30 or 50%
00:38:48
more because pricing is a signal and it's you can always take the price down
00:38:52
and the client the person will always will always come back and ask for the price down but I mean quite frankly and
00:38:57
this is sexist I think men are better at imagining an unrealistic self and women
00:39:02
are more measured >> and I think that's one of the things that has held back women as
00:39:07
entrepreneurs and the fact that not as much capital has been available to them because the people allocating capital
00:39:11
have been white dudes from Stanford or Harvard. 40% of VCs are from two schools of I think it was Charlie Munger who
00:39:17
said someone who has a crazy vision of their own potential that's stupid and obnoxious.
00:39:25
His attitude was never bet against that person because occasionally they're right. And so for we talked about Musk
00:39:32
for a guy to think I'm going to raise so much money and command technology that I
00:39:36
can be responsible for 90% of launches and control 70% of the Earth's low orbit
00:39:44
satellites. That's pretty arrogant. So yeah, I agree with you and you know it. Let me put it
00:39:50
this way. If you're going to air to the upside because the market will bring you
00:39:54
back on its own. >> That's so true. Um Sam Salman has been in all the news lately in part because
00:40:01
of this article that the New Yorker did, two reporters there, Ronan Faroh and Andrew Morren.
00:40:07
>> Um which was this article and then he responded with with this blog post here
00:40:11
two years ago. I thought Sam had a really good brand >> cuz he was out in Congress. He was
00:40:17
saying this tech, you know, he was asking for regulation. It seemed it has turned unbelievably quickly,
00:40:22
unbelievably fast. Well, we've said this before, he's a proxy for all of AI. I
00:40:26
think the greatest brand destruction other than the US over the last 18 months has been AI and also Sam Alman.
00:40:33
But we keep falling into this trap over and over and that is something happened through the 70s, 80s and 90s and that is
00:40:40
America used its heroes used to be athletes, government officials and actors and then there was a dramatic
00:40:48
decline in um attendance to religious institutions but people still have really big questions and want sort of an
00:40:55
authority or a godlike figure. The closest thing we have to religion is technology. Most people don't understand
00:41:00
it. It has a mystical feel to it. I have no idea how my phone works. I can ask it
00:41:04
anything and it comes back with a relatively authoritative answer that I trust. Similar if I was talking or
00:41:09
praying. Like most of the time when we're on AI, we're kind of praying. We're we're sending a question into the
00:41:14
echo to a being thinking it's smarter than us and it's going to come back with
00:41:18
an empathetic, loving, correct answer. So the new Jesus Christ was born in the '9s and that was Steve Jobs. And he was
00:41:26
taken from us early like Jesus Christ. The idolatry of innovators has absolutely gone crazy. And the new Jesus
00:41:33
Christ, if you will, are these tax CEOs. And here's what we fail to understand.
00:41:38
They do not have our best interests at heart. They are not concerned with our emotional well-being. They are not going
00:41:43
to comfort us when we're older. They are there, and they play a key component in
00:41:47
capitalism to do anything that is required to get their earnings up 1 cent per share every day. and they will make
00:41:54
incremental decisions that justify the harming and self harm of teen girls. Cheryl Samberg, the weaponization of our
00:42:02
platforms to make our the coarsening of our discourse, Mark Zuckerberg, I mean, the radicalization of young men,
00:42:11
uh, the people running YouTube, they we keep thinking that the newest tech CEO is going to save us, that this
00:42:19
guy cares. Sam Alman was the gay son we all wanted. Like super nice, super friendly, hush voices, well senator. I'm
00:42:28
worried about that as well. Right. These guys would sleep with their cousin for a
00:42:34
nickel. That's their job. Their job is to increase earnings. They're not here
00:42:38
to save us. We're supposed to elect people who put in guard rails for them. So everyone is saying or asking me, can
00:42:45
we trust Sam Alman? I'm like, no. And we shouldn't have to. We should have
00:42:49
regulators putting in guard rails on AI. We should be testing these things. Government agencies should be testing
00:42:55
these things. We should be ensuring that these technologies are not used to surveil Americans, right? That we would
00:43:02
still have cartoons like characters on cigarettes marketing to 12y olds if we hadn't put in place regulation. And the
00:43:11
tobacco executives would claim that they weren't marketing to young people. Ford
00:43:15
would still be pouring mercury into the river if we didn't have an EPA and regulation. So Sam is doing exactly what
00:43:21
he's supposed to be doing. The latest hero that's going to save us is Dario
00:43:24
Amod. We've decided he's the good guy. Now the villain's journey in tech is the
00:43:29
same. Some compelling person we think is a wonderful guy and it's almost always a
00:43:35
guy, occasionally a woman. You know, we need to do better gender balance. That was Cheryl Samberg in the workplace. And
00:43:42
then we find out that they are doing their job and that is doing anything they can legally to increase shareholder
00:43:47
value regardless of whether it prevents a tragedy of the commons or not. And then we get angry at them. The journey
00:43:53
from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader gets shorter and shorter, but they all follow the same path. And then 18 months
00:44:00
later, we realize that they would too will do will say and do whatever they can to try and delay and opuscate
00:44:05
regulation. And that sometimes when we don't have a government with a lack of
00:44:09
domain expertise, with a lack of insight, with people who are a cross between the land of the dead and the
00:44:15
golden girls and don't understand these technologies, that when these technologies are allowed to run just
00:44:21
free with no regulation, they do bad things. So Sam Alman is the latest person we've discovered as Darth Vader,
00:44:28
who's gone to the dark side. It happens with all of them because they're doing
00:44:32
their job. We as citizens aren't doing our job. and that is we're not putting
00:44:35
in place elected officials that regulate these companies. So yeah, can we trust Sam Alman? No. But we shouldn't need to
00:44:41
trust him. We should be able to trust that we have smart elected officials that will regulate these companies.
00:44:45
>> Did you see this article he wrote in response to being having a Molotov
00:44:49
cocktail thrown at his house? >> I read this article without reading it. So there's been death threats on his
00:44:53
life. And let me be clear, there's absolutely no justification whatsoever for this. And it needs to be I don't
00:45:01
even like it when people yell at JD Vance when he's skiing with his family. One of the we don't want to be that
00:45:06
nation or we don't in the west we have a if you're operating with the confines of
00:45:09
the law which Sam is he deserves to live in peace. It is sad. Do you realize in the US now there's no more people
00:45:14
working in private security than there are cops really because there's always
00:45:19
going to be a number of people who are likely I don't know about the perpetrator here who are mentally ill
00:45:25
and who will find an excuse essentially the the makeup usually of these perpetrators or these these these
00:45:32
criminal actors is they're usually young men looking to restore their social
00:45:37
capital through what they perceive as a historic act of violence against a famous person. This has gone on for a
00:45:43
long time. He's now famous. I don't think it's fair. I've seen some people
00:45:47
try to equate AI's dangers as if these acts of violence are somehow justified.
00:45:54
They're not. There's no justification for a healthcare executive being executed in the streets. There's no
00:45:58
justification for violence against Sam or attempted violence against Sam and his family. I think it's young men with
00:46:05
a lack of opportunity, mental illness, and unfortunately access to firearms everywhere. But it's always happened. I
00:46:10
don't make the connection that somehow it's more justified. I think famous
00:46:13
people, one in three presidents has been shot at. >> Crazy, isn't it? >> So, the more famous you get, quite
00:46:18
frankly, the more personal risk there is because someone is going to decide that
00:46:21
taking you out for whatever reason is going to restore their social capital. Um, actually, if you look at
00:46:27
assassination attempts and violence, the it's actually gone down. But these stories are cinematic and very
00:46:33
interesting and they get a lot of attention. But I think it's a shame we live in a society where especially in
00:46:38
the west where they have to endure that kind of risk. The one of the really most
00:46:42
lovely moments I've seen, I don't know if I don't know if it was the Danish or
00:46:45
the Norwegian prime minister who stepped down, they applauded and he got on a bike and rode home.
00:46:50
>> I thought you can't do that in the US. You know, Obama's kids still have Secret
00:46:54
Service protection. >> So there's definitely something I I quite frankly blame it on big tech that
00:47:00
tries to convince people that this person is their enemy and this person is evil. Sam's not evil. I don't I don't
00:47:06
know him personally. I sat next to him at this party I went to, but he's doing
00:47:10
his job. Quite frankly, we're not doing ours. >> Do you think he's a nihilist? And I
00:47:15
don't really know the definition of the word nihilist, but I guess it's someone
00:47:17
who believes that life is essentially meaningless. >> I think there's a nihilist vein running
00:47:22
through big tech where a lot of them have go bags. They have a plan for if [ __ ] gets real.
00:47:29
If there's a zombie apocalypse or there's a revolution or there's a massive pandemic, they have definitive
00:47:36
plans and they've spent tens of millions of dollars. They meet their pilots at uh
00:47:40
Oakland airport. They get on their Gulfream 650. They fly to New Zealand to Auckland and they have a bunker built
00:47:46
out. >> Is this true? >> Oh, there's a lot of them. >> Really?
00:47:49
>> There's a lot of goat plans amongst the wealthy. And sometimes it's not as
00:47:53
dramatic. Sometimes it's just a home nuclear attack, cyber attack, revolution, but there I would say
00:48:00
amongst billionaires, I would bet conservatively one in three have some sort of go plan. And that's nihilist.
00:48:07
And also I to a certain extent I think wanting to be an interplanetary species is a little bit nihilist.
00:48:12
>> Also, you know, if they're saying that in the future people aren't going to
00:48:16
have jobs and there's robotics and there's this AGI, this super intelligence which is going to be
00:48:20
smarter than everybody. Um, and even if there was a 1% chance, a 1% chance that these doomer predictions around AI could
00:48:29
come true, I would I would stop. A 1% chance of humanity um sort of self-imploding or destroying itself.
00:48:37
Wouldn't a rational person stop? >> Well, okay, you're Oenheimer. It's going
00:48:41
to take 3 million American deaths to invade Japan. Japan will not surrender. And you're you're been charged with
00:48:49
splitting the atom. there was much more than a 1% chance that our ability to split the atom and then show and then
00:48:55
show we would use it against a civilian population would result in the end of the world should he have stopped
00:49:00
development of it. So a lot of scientists nuclear scientists killed themselves. They committed suicide
00:49:05
because they were convinced once we'd split the atom and used it against civilians it was the end of the world.
00:49:09
It was just a matter of time before we all all using nuclear devices. So I don't I think you keep moving forward
00:49:16
and nihilism where nihilism impacts these people. Let me go back to the go bag. I talked to one of these people. He
00:49:21
outlined his plan for me. Right. >> He's a billionaire. >> Yeah. Outlined his plan. His plan B if
00:49:27
things get really ugly, right? And my view was, "Okay, boss, let's play
00:49:31
this out. Something happens. There's an event. It's too dangerous to stay here.
00:49:36
You meet your pilots at the airport. I mean, [ __ ] really gets real. People scouring for food. People become feral.
00:49:43
Like, you don't think your pilots are going to kill you and [ __ ] your wife?
00:49:47
Like what what do you think's going to happen? You don't think the people in
00:49:51
New Zealand are going to be like let's go take the rich guys [ __ ] Like it strikes me that these are such mil
00:49:58
misallocated efforts and capital that if you're really focused on your own future,
00:50:04
whether you're wealthy or not wealthy, that your resources and your talent should be allocated towards trying to
00:50:11
make this place a little bit more habitable, not trying to colonize Mars, not having a go bag. And this is part of
00:50:17
the problem with the 0.1%. There are 900 billionaires in the United States and I
00:50:23
would imagine 300 of them 300 of them give money. They're responsible for 20%
00:50:27
of all political donations. And that 20% number is misleading because they can be
00:50:31
more strategic. So unions are big givers, but they just give money to whoever's pro- union. So it's not that
00:50:37
strategic. Billionaires can allocate capital to a specific issue, really ramp it up. So they have a disproportionate
00:50:43
amount of control over our elected population. And the problem is the 0.1% are not invested in the health of
00:50:50
America. Why? They don't have to put up with TSA lines. They fly private. They
00:50:56
don't have to put up with shitty healthcare. They have concierge medicine and access to the best medicine in the
00:51:01
world. They don't have to put up with 40% of third graders can't read or
00:51:05
write. Their kids go to amazing schools that spend on average $75,000 a year on their kid versus 15,000 at a public
00:51:12
school, 10,000 at a public school in a low-inccome area. They don't need police. They have dormant security.
00:51:18
Where I live in Soho, there's no homeless. As far as I can tell, there's
00:51:21
no crime. There's no cops. There's cameras everywhere and dormant everywhere. My point is, they are no
00:51:26
longer invested in the well-being of America. They've totally dissociated from the investments required to make
00:51:35
America a better place because they're sequestered from it. They're no longer
00:51:38
invested in the well-being of America. And what I find strange about this nihilism is that these individuals think
00:51:44
that they are no longer as invested in the well-being or the safety of the world. I think that's very unhealthy.
00:51:51
>> These are some of the most concerning conversations I've had. So, like one of
00:51:54
the things that happens when you have a podcast and you, you know, interesting people come on and you start hanging
00:51:58
around with more interesting people and more powerful people is you get a world,
00:52:01
you get little peaks into new worlds that you didn't know existed. You kind of get to see behind certain curtains.
00:52:06
And I remember having a particular conversation in um in London at a kitchen table where someone was
00:52:12
describing one of these AI CEOs to me and basically making the case that they believe there's a roughly 10% chance I
00:52:20
think they said seven if I'm not misunderstanding percent chance that it's um that it will result in the end
00:52:25
of the world some sort of catastrophic event. But they really didn't care because
00:52:31
they think that being the person that summoned this new intelligence amongst us was probably more consequential than
00:52:41
whatever happens. And like if I wasn't privy to, again, hearing this secondhand
00:52:46
from someone I know who knows this person extremely well, I know he knows him extremely well cuz they hang out.
00:52:52
Him telling me that, I would have wouldn't have believed this. I would have thought that's nonsense. I would
00:52:56
have thought to myself, you know, they must be kind because they have kids and they're, you know, but actually now I I
00:53:01
very much believe what you're saying about this nihilism where I don't actually believe they give a [ __ ] Some
00:53:06
of them I actually don't believe some of them give a [ __ ] I actually think some
00:53:10
of them are playing a game and they're playing a video game with with our futures
00:53:14
or they the incentives. Look, in the United States, when I was growing up, my dad's boss had a slightly bigger house
00:53:22
and he drove a Cadillac and we drove a Grand Torino, but we were members of the same country club and his house was a
00:53:28
5-minute drive away. >> And maybe my dad's boss got to fly business class and we flew coach. The
00:53:34
delta in having money, having a decent, you know, having a middle class life and
00:53:39
an upper class was like this. Now the delta is this. Let's look at air transportation. Flying on Spirit
00:53:46
Airlines is a humiliating, dangerous experience. United Airlines, economy, economy, comfort, economy, plus business
00:53:54
class, first class. Oh, wait, that's not enough. Let's go to private. There's
00:53:57
charter. There's fractional. There's a cessence nitation. There's a Bombardier
00:54:01
Challenger 300. There's a global 650. Now there's a new G7. The delta in your
00:54:07
life, in your healthcare. My mom was very sick when I was very young. And when I think about how humiliating it
00:54:13
was for the two of us having her to endure cancer when we were underinsured, >> it was a devastating, traumatic,
00:54:20
humiliating experience. >> Now, if I need I take Lunesto when I travel cuz I have trouble sleeping. I
00:54:27
have a medical concierge company. They get me the drug delivered within two hours to my house. I have NAD
00:54:35
treatments. They arrange for someone to come to my house when it's convenient
00:54:38
for me and do it in my my living room. I can text my doctor. I have a medical kit
00:54:44
with all these things in it. If I'm abroad, I can text my doctor and say, "My son's not feeling well." They
00:54:49
FaceTime me. I open the kit. They can tell me exactly what to do. The the healthc care I am receiving right now, I
00:54:56
have my blood taken every 3 months. They send it to some bond layer in Norway with PhDs who can tell me that I have
00:55:03
less than a 7% chance of any cancers as evidenced by a lack of whatever it is antibodies, the cancer cells. The health
00:55:10
care now for the point for the 1% is dramatic. And it's all the same thing. The bottom 99% of Western societies are
00:55:18
essentially being optimized and monetized to make the life of the 1% just unbelievable.
00:55:25
The life you can lead in the 1% is so dramatic and so incredible. Broader selections set of mates. Your kids have
00:55:31
better health care, better educational opportunities, you have influence, people want to know you. So the the
00:55:38
incentives to not be rich but to be very rich are so incredible. And the way you
00:55:43
get very rich is through stock options typically in technology that I think the incentives are so great that people will
00:55:48
make incremental decisions and ignore the fact that oh one in 18 girls who are self harming in the UK site Instagram as
00:55:56
a reason for that. Well, let's find research that maybe create some doubts because once I become a billionaire,
00:56:03
I'll be a better person. and they're getting so much criticism and so much
00:56:07
[ __ ] posting and it's so competitive and there's fewer and fewer winners that
00:56:12
become much bigger, right? It used to be five companies won and got hundreds of millions of dollars. Now one company
00:56:18
wins and gets tens of billions. So you can see how incrementally this path to Darth Vader is pretty tempting. So I I
00:56:27
think these I think they just get caught up in they get caught up in this competition and they lose all sight.
00:56:34
Also my uh co-host on the pivot podcast said something that was illuminating to me during co I was walking down the
00:56:42
street with my sister and a homeless person kind of stirred. There was a lot of homeless people because they to the
00:56:47
homeless shelters turned out everybody and she jumped out of her skin and I said well that was a bit of an
00:56:53
overreaction. He's not going to hurt us. And she said, "You know, you're 6'2",
00:56:57
190. Easy for you to say. You understand? She women walk around in a constant state of fear. And that fear is
00:57:04
rational. And it really struck me. And then Cara said, "These guys don't
00:57:09
understand anything about victimization because they've never been victims. They're traditionally white males who
00:57:15
have grown up in upper income households and they've never really understood what
00:57:18
it's like to be a victim. So they don't put in place the safeguards. It's so
00:57:22
competitive that it's just easier for them to give money, some strategic money
00:57:26
to key people and ensure that they're not regulated such that they can get to
00:57:30
be billionaires because all the incentives are do whatever is required to win. Sam Alman isn't going to be
00:57:35
remembered for being a good or a bad guy. He's going to be remembered for the
00:57:39
guy who either was the number one AI company or blew it. That's what he's
00:57:44
going to be remembered for. And right now he's blowing it, it appears, right?
00:57:47
But people are going to look back and say, "Well, he didn't get public.
00:57:52
Anthropic ended up being at worth more. It was kind of a disappointment financially, but he was a good guy."
00:57:58
That's not what he's going for. And quite frankly, that's not what our
00:58:01
society rewards. Whenever I talk to new founders, they all carry the same belief that the
00:58:06
biggest threat to their small business is having a bad product. It's not. The
00:58:10
biggest threat they face is hiring the wrong person for their small team. Because bad hires put the handbreak on
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growth and rapidly infect company culture. And I get it. When you're starting out, you need a players to grow
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your company, but you don't have 40 spare hours to spend sifting through interviews. So, you hire fast to fill
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And terms and conditions apply. Inflammation is something I'd never really thought to check until fairly
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membership. It gives you 160 lab tests for $365 a year, which is just $1 a day. I think your assessment of AI in terms
01:00:06
of it creating more opportunity than it destroys is accurate. I also think that in the near term and all of our lives
01:00:13
are going to be quite quite different. I spend a lot of time on this podcast. We
01:00:17
talk we've spoken to a lot of the big CEOs from AI companies and tried to pass
01:00:20
through this and I've never really gotten to a solid a solid conclusion of what the future looks like. But um do
01:00:25
you have a a a case for the future where this technology is the first that actually delivers on the promise of
01:00:30
making us more human? There's talk about loneliness. There's talk, you know,
01:00:34
algorithms are going to get get more attentive. But I have this like thesis that potentially, you know, social
01:00:39
networking say it's going to connect us and make us more human. That's kind of
01:00:42
the narrative of all these tools. But maybe this technology renders us only useful for that which humans can do,
01:00:47
which is the relationships thing you were talking about and connection and being out touching grass with our
01:00:51
friends and family. Is there a utopia >> just with social media has some real
01:00:55
upsides? I would argue at this point meta is actually a net negative. It's I
01:00:59
think done so much damage. >> But with AI, there's a lot of upsides. A
01:01:04
really encouraging piece of data I saw is that when you spend time on social media, it takes you to the extremes. The
01:01:10
algorithms see money and more Nissan ads in figuring out if you're conservative
01:01:15
or liberal and then demonizing the other side and tickling your sensors. Right. >> Yeah. I'll get served a video of Ted
01:01:22
Cruz or Victor Orban looking like an ass because that I'm a progressive and that
01:01:26
makes me happy. And then they elevate content of some progressive of AOC calling out somebody and I start to hate
01:01:33
the other side. What they're finding with AI is it's actually people who
01:01:36
spend more time in AI, it's actually moderating their views because AI is about uh taking the medium or the
01:01:42
average of every piece of data. Also, do you notice how nice AI is? >> Yeah,
01:01:47
>> great question, Stephen. You know, no matter what you say or how stupid it is,
01:01:51
it won't say, "That's a really stupid idea, Stephen." It'll say, "I can
01:01:54
understand why you're asking this question." And generally speaking, because it looks for the median of
01:01:58
things, it looks for the average. What is the most often used seventh word after these six words are strung
01:02:03
together? >> Mh. >> That it's pushing people towards the middle. It's actually having a
01:02:07
moderating effect, which I find very encouraging. I think old people in senior care who maybe have lost family
01:02:13
members or don't have a lot of relationships in their life, I can see AI characters playing a big role in
01:02:20
their life. I believe for a long time that the biggest danger of AI is not weapons, it's not income inequality. We
01:02:30
voted for income inequality or contamination of our elections. I mean, all of these things are big issues. The
01:02:36
biggest downside of AI in my view is loneliness. And that is, and we talk about this a lot, AI is convincing
01:02:44
people they can have a reasonable faximile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Why go through the effort of
01:02:48
having friends when you have Discord and Reddit? Why go through the hassle of getting a job when you can make money on
01:02:54
Coinbase or Robin Hood supposedly? And why would you go through the effort of trying to have a romantic relationship
01:03:00
when you have lifelike synthetic porn? And the young male brain, I think, is especially susceptible to this. Men aged
01:03:06
20 to 30 are spending less time outdoors in prison inmates. 42% of men 18 to 24 and we talked about this on your last
01:03:12
show have never asked a woman out in person. So people are starting to believe they can have a reasonable
01:03:17
faximile of life. And what they need to know is that 40% of the S&P our economy
01:03:22
is trying to sequester you from the most important and rewarding thing in your life and that is your relationships. So
01:03:28
my prediction for America is we will never be as prosperous. incredible prosperity, incredible economic growth,
01:03:35
and massive loneliness, depression, anxiety, and obesity. >> I wanted to get your POV as well on all
01:03:40
this war stuff that's going on over in the Middle East. What you thought Trump
01:03:44
was trying to do and actually what happened because, you know, he's he's
01:03:47
talking about, oh, no, we said it would be 6 weeks, it's 5 and a half weeks,
01:03:51
everything's going to plan. We're we're winning the war. And I you're good at
01:03:56
seeing through things. What what actually happened in your view here? I think that he was talked into by some of
01:04:02
his security adviserss and Netanyahu that his legacy could be restoring or making the Middle East more peaceful and
01:04:08
being the the president that that severely diminished the capacity of what has been arguably the number one um
01:04:17
source of terror in the region and maybe even around the world for a long time. that this was his defining moment as a
01:04:23
president to go in that they were weakened, they were hobbled and we had the military assets and the intelligence
01:04:28
to go in and topple the regime and he would be known as the president that liberated the Middle East. I think he
01:04:33
bought into that >> off the back of Venezuela. >> Well, >> which was a kind of a success.
01:04:38
>> Not kind of. That was arguably one of the greatest military operations in
01:04:42
history, but it was a military operation. It wasn't a war. I mean, supposedly his guards didn't know what
01:04:48
happened. and all of a sudden they were on the floor throwing up because there was some sort of crazy radiation or
01:04:51
radio waves. Not a single American soldier uh killed, lifted him out. I mean that that was that was an
01:04:59
incredible operation. I think he got drunk on that macho and that success and thought well I can do the same thing.
01:05:05
And the problem with wars is that the enemy has a say. And what we have found since I think a lot of our leaders
01:05:12
believe that wars could ultimately if you have a bigger army will result in unconditional surrender on the other
01:05:17
side. And there really hasn't been unconditional surrender since World War II. And all the enemy needs to do
01:05:22
whether it's the Vietkong or the Taliban or the IRGC, all they need to do is
01:05:26
survive and they win. In addition, I would describe the war as being operational excellence and strategic
01:05:32
incompetence. I actually believe there was justification and some merit to the idea of a military operation that tried
01:05:39
to take advantage of a weakened Iran whose air defenses were down to take out the IRGC or at least maybe provide cloud
01:05:46
cover for a revolution against the IRGC to diminish their navy, diminish their nuclear capabilities, diminish their
01:05:53
missile launch capability. I think there was real justification for that. The problem was the strategic incompetence
01:05:59
here. not going to not enlisting some European allies, not not briefing Congress, not coordinating with Gulf
01:06:06
allies, not recognizing the game theory around what happens if they start firing
01:06:10
at ships in the straight of Hormuz. It just was strategically incompetent. And now we're in a situation where we want
01:06:19
to diminish their nuclear capacity. But the reality is if they can maintain an ability to to turn off and on the
01:06:25
straight of hormones, that is probably more powerful than them having nuclear weapons. If you look at if you look at
01:06:32
what happens if if the fertilizer or the the products that create fertilizer are
01:06:39
further sequestered, you could have a mass starvation event around the world. And so we've essentially given them
01:06:49
potentially a weapon that's more powerful than a nuclear weapon. And also we look like we have a bit of a glass
01:06:56
jaw. We go in, we lose 14 soldiers. Tragedy for them and their families. The Russians are losing a thousand people a
01:07:02
day and they don't show any signs of giving up. We look like this giant boxer
01:07:06
who's the most skilled and biggest boxer in the world. We go in argument over
01:07:10
whether we should go in or not. But now if we withdraw, what incentive do the Iranians right now have to negotiate
01:07:18
when every day this goes on, they look like the little guy that's that that stood up to the evil America and Israel.
01:07:25
I think this has been a disaster from a US brand standpoint. And I would argue that them blocking inbound and outbound
01:07:33
traffic from Iranian ports is actually the way to go. But that lends itself to the argument we should have just
01:07:39
continued with economic sanctions. But I have to own it. I thought military action was a good idea. I would argue, I
01:07:46
apologize for the word salad here, that we've been at war with Iran for 47 years. Their first act to this regime in
01:07:50
1979 was to take 110 Americans hostage. 70% of the IEDs in Iraq were built in Iran. We have been at war with Iran for
01:07:59
a long time. The question is whether or not this military action/war was worth it. And it looks as if it was so poorly
01:08:07
executed on a strategic level that it is really diminished our brand. And we're
01:08:13
now in the definition of a quagmire. If we leave, we look weak. And any nation we perform military action against just
01:08:19
says start firing missiles at their neighbors. You know who summarized every war for the US right now is in this war
01:08:27
was Ho Chi Min. When he was describing Vietnam, he said, "They will kill a lot
01:08:31
of our people. We will kill some of theirs. They will tire. They will go home. >> We killed a million people in V Vietnam.
01:08:41
We lost 58,000 and we left. >> Yeah. >> Right. So, Americans tolerance for pain.
01:08:47
And I'm not suggesting that we should go on military misadventures. But this
01:08:52
right now is no doubt turning out to be a giant win for the IRGC and a pretty severe loss for America that fur further
01:09:00
alienates us from our allies and shows uh kind of our soft tissue around our willingness to actually finish the job.
01:09:06
The other statement that kind of perfectly summarizes this war is we broke it now you fix it. We're leaving
01:09:12
the world a much more insecure place, much more economically vulnerable. Gulf States thought that having a US military
01:09:19
base was Kevlar and ended up just putting a giant bullseye on them. So, people are going to think twice before
01:09:25
they cooperate with our US military by hosting bases. Uh we appear to have not thought through getting our expats out
01:09:32
of the Gulf, protecting the Gulf States. And I'm biased. I think the Trump administration will be known for
01:09:37
criminal for corruption and incompetence. And that incompetence is bubbling up. I watched a press
01:09:43
conference of his last night where he said this which kind of links to what you were saying.
01:09:47
>> They're they're delaying it because they we don't know who to deal with. They are
01:09:51
in, you know, they know who the leader is in this country. We don't know who
01:09:55
the leader is in Iran. >> And I just thought, do you know what? If I was running Iran,
01:10:01
that's exactly what I would want. We don't know who to deal with, Trump. We
01:10:05
don't even know who to negotiate with. If he can't negotiate, he can't do
01:10:08
anything. So I think I think the Iranians potentially the the IRGC are saying no we don't even know who's
01:10:14
leading because then what can you do? You can't just keep bombing. That's not
01:10:18
going to work. You also can't negotiate. So it runs the clock down. You can affect regime change from the air. They
01:10:26
the Iranians are smart. They have distributed power. >> Yeah. >> So there's no kind of head of the snake
01:10:30
to cut off. But also a lot of this is incompetence on our part. Do you know what we have done in the US to our
01:10:35
diplomatic corps? We've absolutely gutted it. When Vance goes to Islamabad thinking he's going to do a deal, if you
01:10:42
look at the history of every truce of every deal of every summit, 97% of the work is done before they hit the tarmac
01:10:51
by diplomats who go through line by line and iron out and talk to each other and
01:10:57
negotiate. We've gutted our diplomatic core. Our counter intelligence operations have been gutted. So, we're
01:11:05
kind of flying blind without instruments. and they think that JD Vance going to Islamabad for a Tik Tok
01:11:10
moment where he tries to look presidential and then blames it on the IRGC, it's just not going to work. So I
01:11:16
think a a lack of investment in key areas, a lack of soft power, whether it's through cutting USA aid, a lack of
01:11:23
respect for our diplomatic core and the engine room, like like you know actually
01:11:28
working with people and talking to them. I think this level of incompetence and arrogance is all bubbling up and they
01:11:35
you're right, they don't even know who to talk to. That's good. They don't even
01:11:38
know who who do we negotiate with. And by the way, you got to look at incentives. If I'm the IRGC, I'm like,
01:11:45
all we need to do is survive. Yeah. Every day this goes on. And by the way, we're in the middle of what I'd call a
01:11:50
the first AI meme war. And that is Trump is communicating with truths on truth social and these macho videos and memes
01:12:00
of him as Jesus Christ, but he's been bested by kind of the sloppi memes of the IRGC. Have you seen these Legos
01:12:10
memes? They understand him better than he understands them. They are outstanding. And it's a group of 18 to
01:12:17
25 year old probably people who look like this crew. >> None of the none of this what we're
01:12:21
involved in Tehran figuring out AIdriven means, highly produced, highly effective, very strong
01:12:28
message going right after the, you know, portrayals of the Epstein island and I mean they are doing a much better job
01:12:36
because as Lincoln said and it goes back to basics, you can't win a war without
01:12:39
public support and you can't lose a war with public support. And right now Iran
01:12:44
is winning what you would call the slopp. They're putting out better information
01:12:48
and propaganda than us right now. >> And what how do you predict this ends?
01:12:51
Because as you said, we can't back out of this war as the West. Trump can't
01:12:55
back out of it, but he also just can't keep doing it. His the midterms are coming up. His approval ratings are I
01:13:00
think an all-time low because of this war. His base is turning on him. So, he can't it's like lose loose at this
01:13:06
moment. >> Yeah. So, the honest answer is I don't know cuz he's unpredictable. If I had to
01:13:10
pick anything, I think there'll be a multinational force that has a vested interest in ensuring the straight of
01:13:15
hormones is open. There's so many things we've taken for granted in the West and
01:13:19
one of them is freedom of navigation. If Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia decide we need money or we need
01:13:24
geopolitical power, we're going to close the straits of Malika or the Strait of
01:13:28
Singapore. What if China closes off certain straits in the South China Sea where something like 60% of trade goes
01:13:34
through? We have always enforced, we've gone to war over this basic notion of
01:13:39
freedom of navigation that pretty much any ship goes pretty much gets to go anywhere with pretty much anything on
01:13:44
it. So I think that European nations, Asian nations all have a vested interest in ensuring the straight of Hormos is
01:13:51
open. The way to do that is by sequestering or blocking offloading and onloading of oil into Iranian ports
01:13:59
because at some point it not only shuts them off economically. I didn't know
01:14:02
this, but within I think about 12 weeks if you can't offload the oil and get it
01:14:09
somewhere, it backs up and actually starts to damage the source. Well, >> oh, okay.
01:14:15
>> It like stops up. So, I think ideally the optimistic scenario is there's a
01:14:20
multinational force that enforces the straight of Hormos. He comes up with a series of objectives. If he had in his
01:14:26
first if he had outlined, we're going to take out most of their navy. We're going
01:14:29
to give the Iranian people an opportunity to overthrow the IRGC. We're going to take out the majority of their
01:14:34
missile capability. And after 72 hours said, "This is a win." and got the hell out and
01:14:40
coordinated with Gulf States to say, "What can we do to ensure your safety?"
01:14:44
I think it would have been a win. But now, I don't even know what his objectives are. Can you list what his
01:14:49
objectives are? I don't know what they are. They seem to keep >> We're going to be out very soon, which
01:14:54
is why we need to continue this war. It the communications here and thinking has
01:14:59
been so sclerotic and difficult to track. I'm like, who's boarding what ships? Is it a ceasefire?
01:15:04
Isn't a ceasefire? He claims that them commandeering two western vessels is not
01:15:10
a violation of the ceasefire. Of course it is. That's actually that's an act of
01:15:14
war. So we don't even know what to look for. You ask me how does this turn out?
01:15:18
I think a multinational force that opens a straight of hormones. Too many people
01:15:21
have too much vested interest in free navigation. >> But in such a scenario they they're
01:15:27
probably building up drones right now in a ceasefire underground. They'll be
01:15:30
building drone factories in every bunker in Iran right now. The minute you do a multinational force in the straight of
01:15:35
moose, those drones start hitting ships and then the big companies say, "I'm not
01:15:38
putting my ships through there." >> I think that's a fair point and actually
01:15:41
not that many ships have gone down. But it's actually an insurance problem because if you have 2 million barrels on
01:15:46
a tanker, you've got aund $160 million payload. Someone has to take receipt of
01:15:51
that. Someone has bought it. So there needs to be middlemen in the form of insurance. And no one wants to ensure
01:15:56
take that kind of risk right now. So it's a lack of insurance more than it is
01:15:59
a lack of safety from the threat. But I do think the reality is the Iranians, the IRGC, I say the bottom line is you
01:16:07
go after the money. You don't bomb civilian infrastructure. That's a war
01:16:10
crime. But making it very difficult for them and creating a carrot. You can have, you know, free flow of oil. If you
01:16:17
look at the Arab Spring, if you look at revolutions, they're usually a function
01:16:21
of unemployment or economics. So if you were to inhibit their ability to export oil, that brings them to the table
01:16:29
because the IRGC has been able to survive because millions of families in Iran are dependent upon the IRGC for
01:16:34
their check. They control the most profitable, biggest parts of the economy. So if you if you cut off their
01:16:41
economics that I think or threaten to, I think that brings them to the table. I think that's an the most optimistic
01:16:48
scenario is the straits open by a multinational force and there's a feeling of safety because it's enforced.
01:16:53
Iran agrees to keep it open and somehow we develop a series of objectives that we claim those boxes we've been checked
01:17:00
and we declare victory and get the hell out of dodge. But every day this goes on, we seed, in my opinion advantage and
01:17:08
power to the IRGC because they just look like they're winning. I think it's clear
01:17:11
that Trump miscalculated this situation quite horrifically. You you have to be a
01:17:16
logic like you don't have to be a genius to look at what he's saying and see the
01:17:19
contradictions, the constant contradictions week over week. And the big one he's now got himself trapped in
01:17:24
is he was handing out a six week timeline at the start of this and we're approaching 6 weeks. So if you watch
01:17:28
this press conference from yesterday, he is incredibly irritated because all the
01:17:32
journalists are saying, "You said 6 weeks, it's 6 weeks." And for the first
01:17:37
time, there's a real measurable contradiction in what he said at the start versus now. And so if you watch
01:17:43
it, he's so he's so agitated. He's calling the reporters a disgrace. I
01:17:47
think in this press conference yesterday, he personally insulted around 10 journalists.
01:17:52
>> He's crashing out. >> He's crashing out. >> Yeah. >> And for me, that was like, "God, this
01:17:56
guy's lost. But I find the most interesting thing about this, one of the most interesting thing is someone who
01:18:02
follows the markets. If you didn't know there was a war in Iran that threatens
01:18:06
geopolitical, I don't know, safety, world oil flows. >> Yeah. >> If you looked at the market, would you
01:18:13
know? >> No. >> The market just hit an all-time high in the US. And again, it goes back to
01:18:17
something very unhealthy. And that is there's certain elements of our economy,
01:18:21
specifically the wealthy, that have totally disassociated from >> they can't feel it at the pump. Do you
01:18:26
feel it? >> No. >> So 50% of consumer spending in the US is the top 10%. The top 10% don't give a
01:18:33
[ __ ] if gas is at six bucks a gallon. It doesn't matter. Young uh poor people,
01:18:38
lower-inccome people spend 22% of their household income on energy. And when energy prices are going up, it really
01:18:45
impacts them. So unfortunately, we've again outsourced the downside of war to
01:18:49
less wealthy nations who are very oil dependent, to the Gulf, which is incurring damage here. But America is
01:18:56
somewhat sequestered other than reputational risk in who gets elected president.
01:19:02
We're somewhat squ again we've outsourced the pain to military families to people who who spend a
01:19:08
disproportionate amount of their income lower income households on energy. But it's somewhat dangerous that the most
01:19:14
powerful people in the world and to a certain extent the most powerful nation in the world seems to be unaffected by
01:19:20
some of these uh by some of this. uh we stocks are at an all-time high. >> This is something that I've made for
01:19:28
you. I've realized that the direio audience are striv goals that we want to accomplish. And
01:19:35
one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big big goal, it can
01:19:40
feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest
01:19:46
and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps. And we
01:19:52
call this in our team the 1%. And actually this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success
01:19:57
here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that
01:20:02
you have is we've made these 1% diaries and we released these last year and they
01:20:07
all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back but also to introduce some new colors
01:20:12
and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. Now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind
01:20:20
and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries
01:20:26
before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at the diary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in
01:20:33
the description below. On this point of stocks, the average person and tying it back into what we
01:20:38
were saying about AI because there's been this overinvestment in artificial intelligence technology companies. As
01:20:44
you said earlier, a kid in Stanford right now or anybody could raise 1020 million for some AI idea they have and
01:20:50
I'm seeing it everywhere. Um the companies are overinvesting in infrastructure. I mean it was crazy. I
01:20:55
think OpenAI did the biggest ever fund raise. Was it almost two $200 billion >> to build data centers on revenues of I
01:21:01
don't know is it $30 billion or something? Craziness is going on in the markets. At some point things correct?
01:21:07
>> Oh 100%. And if you look at the greatest spends on infrastructure, when they get
01:21:10
above 2 or 3% of GDP, there's almost always a crash afterwards. It happened in the railroads. It happened in
01:21:16
electrification. It happened in the internet. It happened in the huge telco buildout of global crossing.
01:21:22
Now, having said that, that doesn't mean those companies don't come back at some
01:21:25
point, but there's almost always a dip or a correction afterwards. Uh I encourage or I I absolutely was on the
01:21:32
wrong end of that dip in 2000, again in 2008. But if you look at the most valuable
01:21:38
companies in the world, they have in a single year all of them have had a 40 to 97% correction. Amazon
01:21:45
went down 94 97% from 99 to 2001. Facebook was off 72% in 2022. The difference now is if those companies go
01:21:55
down, they're such a big part of the market. If they sneeze, the global economy could catch a cold. So I I think
01:22:01
the technology will absolutely survive. I do think it's seminal. It's breakthrough. But that
01:22:08
doesn't mean that we're not going to incur a pretty massive correction from a
01:22:10
stock market perspective. Also, let me catastrophize for a moment. your generation and the majority of
01:22:19
investors right now are under the impression that any breakthrough in technology results in a small number of
01:22:24
companies over time that are able to use IP distribution ability to raise capital
01:22:31
to sequester and capture trillions of dollars in market cap e-commerce that's
01:22:36
Amazon eBay Shopify social media you know whether it's you know obviously Meta or or or Snap or YouTube or AI.
01:22:48
The problem is is that what we forget is there have been seinal technologies that
01:22:54
have not necessarily resulted in any small number of companies been able to capture shareholder value. Let me give
01:22:59
you some examples. If someone said to you right now for the next 36 months you either have to go without AI or jet
01:23:05
transportation, what would you pick? >> Without jet transportation or without AI
01:23:11
>> prop planes for the next 3 years or or AI? I would I would keep the AI.
01:23:16
>> Okay. Hands down, jet transportation. I use AI every day. I invest in AI
01:23:22
companies. Jet transportation is much more important to me. I think that's skirting along the surface of the
01:23:27
atmosphere at 810 the speed of sound has unlocked emotional and financial well-being across the world. It's an
01:23:32
unbelievable innovation. If you added up all the shareholder value, the losses and the gains, the profits and the
01:23:38
losses right now, as we sit here now, the entire airline and jet manufacturing industry is at break even. It still
01:23:44
hasn't made money. If you look at all the airlines that have gone out of business, if you look at the government
01:23:47
subsidies of all the jet plane manufacturers, it has been a shitty business. It's at zero. PCs. I was on
01:23:53
the board of Gateway Computer. I realize that's the weakest flex in the world.
01:23:58
>> I have no idea what that is. >> You don't know what Gateway is? Oh god,
01:24:00
I feel so old. It was his company Ted Wade who was sort of the Michael Delvis generation figured out a way to assemble
01:24:06
computers in I think South Dakota and it became this hugely valuable company. It
01:24:09
was the second when I was on the board, it was the second largest computer manufacturer by volume in the world. We
01:24:13
were ahead of Apple. We got sold for $600 million or maybe 760, which is what Alphabet will lose in about three
01:24:19
trading seconds or gain today. No one's been able to capture a lot of money around PCs. People say Apple. No, it
01:24:25
wasn't PCs. It was the iPhone. Vaccines. I think vaccines are the second greatest
01:24:30
innovation in history, only bested by the American middle class. Millions of lives saved through vaccines.
01:24:36
Mona is down 90%. There's no one company that's been able to capture sequester
01:24:41
shareholder value. So my thesis is that there's a one in three chance that AI
01:24:46
becomes as important as vaccines, as important as jet transportation, as important as PCs, but there's no one or
01:24:52
small group of companies that are able to capture shareholder value. Why is that? AI puts AI out of business. And
01:25:00
that is if you look at the convergence of the technologies, all the models are converging.
01:25:04
>> Yeah. the AI reverse engineers any feature and basically they're all kind
01:25:09
of they all started with this delta they're all converging towards the same thing. So I wonder if the big winner or
01:25:15
the stakeholder that wins in AI is us. >> Yeah. >> And that is we have this we have amazing
01:25:21
vaccines PCs transportation but a small number of companies haven't become worth trillions of dollars. And I
01:25:28
wonder if the same thing might not happen with AI, with openweight models out of China, with um basically great
01:25:35
models that are for free. My prediction would be to go short the AI ecosystem from a shareholder standpoint, but from
01:25:43
a stakeholder standpoint, I think it's going to be great. And let me back up. I
01:25:48
think a more important technology in terms of how it's going to change the world is not AI. You know, every year I
01:25:53
say this is my technology of the year. In 24, I said it was AI. 25 and 26 I've
01:25:58
had the same technology that said this is more important than AI. Any guesses? Talk about this a lot. You would not
01:26:04
know this technology or use it. That's a hint. >> Okay. Testosterone replacement.
01:26:14
>> That hurts cuz you know I'm on it. That hurts. >> Okay. No. Um Okay. A Zen.
01:26:19
>> Okay. >> GLP1. >> GLP1. Yeah. >> Talk to somebody who's on GLP1 and uses
01:26:23
AI every day and ask them which one they would give up. Yeah, >> I think GLP1, if you look at what's
01:26:29
really going to have an impact on people's lives and what will create more shareholder value, I think it's GLP1
01:26:33
than AI. And a lot of people much smarter than me say you're full of [ __ ] AI. AI is going to change everything. I
01:26:39
I don't I think GLP1 is more important technology than than AI. And my thesis
01:26:43
is there's a one in three chance that AI ends up being more like vaccines than
01:26:48
e-commerce or social. and that it's going to be impossible for a small number of companies to capture all the
01:26:53
shareholder value they're raising money at. The other kind of what I'll put, you
01:26:58
know, fun to speculate or catastrophize. If someone were to say the US economy crashed in the next 24 months or or
01:27:05
valuations came down not 30% but the market dropped 40 or 50%, which has happened before, I wouldn't think it's
01:27:11
because of its misadventures in the Middle East. I think there's a decent chance if I were advising she and China
01:27:18
and I saw America as a real adversary and said we are sick of these guys messing with us, treating us so poorly,
01:27:24
these ridiculous tariffs, very difficult to understand what they're what they're
01:27:29
thinking or how we deal with them. I would do what I think they're doing and
01:27:32
that is I would engage in modern-day steel dumping. So back I think it was in the 80s or the '90s, China wanted to
01:27:39
ramp up, they wanted to consolidate the global steel market. So they began dumping cheap steel into the US and US
01:27:44
steel manufacturers could not compete. And the idea was price it below market, consolidate the market and then you get
01:27:49
margin power. That's basically what Amazon and Netflix have done. They've
01:27:52
sold you a dollar worth of goods for 80 cents until they wrapped up the market. Then they started raising prices. I
01:27:58
think China is beginning to engage in what I'll call AI dumping. And that is
01:28:02
they're going to have a series of openweight models. About a third of corporations now are supposedly using
01:28:07
Chinese lightweight openweight models that are cheaper. If I were she, I would just dump cheap AI into the US market.
01:28:14
And the moment large corporations start announcing they're not engaging these
01:28:17
multi-million dollar site licenses with anthropic or open AI, they're using these inexpensive Chinese models and the
01:28:24
market realizes that there's no way they can justify these incredible valuations.
01:28:28
I think the US market crashes because 40% of the S&P now is directly or tangentially related to this giant bet
01:28:35
America is making on AI. The majority of GDP growth over the last two years has come from AI capex. If that slows down,
01:28:43
we're immediately in recession. >> That's such an interesting idea that if
01:28:46
you're sat in China as a leader now, you go, you know what? Give Americans cheap
01:28:50
AI and you'll kneecap their economy. >> 100%. That's what I would do.
01:28:54
>> It does make sense, right? >> It makes a lot of sense. I I've heard a
01:28:58
lot of founders um get quite scared that there will be an economic crash in the next 12 or 24 months because of the
01:29:04
overinvestment in in AI. And investors are going to start to realize that the returns just aren't there for a lot of
01:29:09
these companies that have raised at 100 million valuation that on an idea and so
01:29:14
the market will contract. And if it if the market does contract, what does history tell us that the individual
01:29:18
should do? The person listening, they're not the average person in such a market
01:29:22
because they're scared they're going to be laid off. If all this investor money
01:29:24
suddenly contracts, investors go risk off. They might be laid off. Well, again, so Jamie Diamond was asked, "What
01:29:31
is the definition of a recession?" and he said something that happens every
01:29:34
seven years. Your generation isn't used to a recession. >> No. >> I was on the board of the New York Times
01:29:40
and within like 60 days 70% of our revenues went away. 2008 the credit crisis advertisers 70 80% of the New
01:29:49
York Times revenue was advertising. You know, in May we're doing X million in revenue.
01:29:55
>> And then you joined the board and then >> Yeah. No, I think I joined the board. I
01:29:59
joined the board at exactly the wrong time. I raised Quickstory. I raised 600 million to become the largest sheriff in
01:30:03
the New York Times and overnight I turned it into 200 million. So, but yeah, that was that was a
01:30:09
learning experience for me. Anyways, just about the time I started having kids. God, that was stressful. Anyway,
01:30:15
they basically within 60 days lost 70% of their ad revenue and we had to go and find a Mexican billionaire to basically
01:30:23
call us to bail us out. Your generation really doesn't know what a recession
01:30:27
looks like. Like, everything stops. Imagine 70% of your subscription and advertising revenue from 1 month to one
01:30:34
month declines. What would that do to your business? >> You'd have to consider letting people go
01:30:39
and you'd have to cut costs. And >> but here's the thing, to a certain
01:30:42
extent, it's healthy. You start developing all these fatty deposits and the best time to start a business is
01:30:50
coming out of a recession because people are cheaper, things are cheaper, people
01:30:54
have a new way of looking at stuff. And also for your generation, people don't realize, I mean, quite
01:31:00
frankly, if I'm a 28-year-old who's talented and doesn't have kids and dogs
01:31:03
yet, I think a recession that takes down the asset prices might not be the worst
01:31:07
thing in the world that happens to your generation. Because when 08 crashed, when there was the crash of '08, we let
01:31:15
the banks fail. We I'm sorry, we bailed out the banks, but we didn't bail out
01:31:19
the economy. And I was coming into my prime income earning years. I was in my early 40s and I was still lucky enough
01:31:25
and talented enough to make good money. So what did I get in 2009? Amazon, Apple, and Netflix for 8, 10, and 12
01:31:32
bucks a share. Those companies have 20xed. >> We don't let anything fail now. We bail
01:31:39
out the markets. Where do you and your colleagues find value? Like what's cheap
01:31:44
right now? Where do you find value? And here's the thing. When you There's two
01:31:48
parts of your life from a financial standpoint. There's investing part of your life and there's harvesting. You're
01:31:53
in the investing part of your life. There's a certain advantage to getting to invest when
01:32:00
asset prices are low. There's nowhere for you to find value. >> Yeah. >> I I I'm pretty comfortable saying Apple
01:32:06
or Nvidia aren't going to 20x from here. Where do you find value? Real estate.
01:32:11
What? Brooklyn is $3,000 a square foot. So while you're in the investing part of
01:32:17
your life and you can survive a bit of a shock, I don't know if quite frankly a
01:32:22
good thing to happen for your generation wouldn't be a correction in asset prices
01:32:27
because the economy has an unbelievable malleability and resilience to reform, reshape and come back. Recessions
01:32:33
usually don't last longer than 18, 24, 36 months. And I think a correction in
01:32:39
asset values would be good. But what we've decided, the leadership of my generation has decided we'd rather pull
01:32:45
out your credit card and artificially prop up the markets through deficit spending or bailouts.
01:32:51
They're talking, we mentioned Spirit Airlines, they're talking about a $500
01:32:54
million government loan to Spirit Airlines to bail them out. That's nothing but you transferring
01:33:01
money to me. >> Because who owns shares in Spirit? People my age. Who's trying to buy [ __ ]
01:33:09
for cheap? people your age, it should be allowed to go out of business. It should
01:33:14
decline in price. Asset value should go down. When we bailed out every baby boomer owner of a restaurant or a small
01:33:21
business in COVID, that just robbed opportunity from the new graduate of a culinary academy who wanted her shot to
01:33:27
go buy a restaurant for pennies on the dollar. Everyone in my generation has had those asset dips where if you were
01:33:33
resilient and coming into your prime income earning years, you could buy assets for a lower price. We've decided
01:33:39
that the the government is here to bail my generation out and smooth out our assets. Make sure that our assets never
01:33:45
go down by too much. All that does is rub opportunity from your generation. You wrote this book, the the MLP
01:33:51
profile, the simple formula for success. Uh brilliant, brilliant book. And linking to what you were just saying
01:33:57
there, where are you investing now? Like if you're a young person that's trying
01:34:00
to defend your money or just really anybody at any age that's trying to find
01:34:03
a place to put your money where you'll make a return. I guess there's actually
01:34:06
two questions here. which is the investing part. And they're like, "How
01:34:09
do I set myself up just to make more money, especially if there's going to be
01:34:12
an economic collapse, things might get a little bit uncertain?" I think you I
01:34:16
think I heard you say before that less people are leaving their jobs. It's it's
01:34:19
harder for entry- level people to get into newer roles potentially at the moment. So, in such a world where there
01:34:24
is uncertainty and I want to make sure that I don't go broke, I have $10,000,
01:34:30
let's say, and I want to make sure I increase my earning potential. What's
01:34:33
one's advice for those dual strategies? >> Well, I'll tell you what I'm doing. So,
01:34:38
and it's different. I'm at a point where I'm not looking to get rich. I'm looking
01:34:41
to not get poor. So, I just diversify like crazy. I don't put more than I don't invest more than 3% of my net
01:34:47
worth in any one thing. >> Yeah. >> And I've been diversifying out of the US
01:34:50
market, in the Latin America and European markets because the reality is nobody knows. The only kevlar against
01:34:56
the unknown, which is everywhere, is diversification. Now, a younger person can take more risks, right? I mean, what
01:35:02
am I doing? I'm diversifying and I'm investing in Pokemon because I do it
01:35:05
with my son and he loves it and I think collectibles are actually the only place
01:35:09
where there's value right now. Everything to me just looks crazy overvalued. I look at everything and
01:35:13
think that's going to get cut in half. Oh, that's going to get cut in half. But
01:35:17
you always want to be in the market. It's very hard to be a stock picker. So
01:35:20
if you're your age, you're a talented entrepreneur. You're investing in
01:35:23
yourself. There's no ROI like finding a business you're good at, trying to
01:35:28
invest, and working your ass off. That's how you get wealthy in this for young
01:35:32
people in this generation or you find a company that's going fast. You do well
01:35:36
there. You get stock options. But the key is to make sure that a certain amount of your income never comes into
01:35:42
your hands. People your age can't save money. If they get $100, they'll spend
01:35:46
105. So the key is to find every matching program or every vehicle or hack to make sure you never see the
01:35:52
money. And from an early age, it goes into lowcost index funds. Take 30% of your capital and have fun with it. buy
01:36:00
Nvidia, whatever you want that you think you're smarter than everyone else and
01:36:03
then you're going to find out you're not and and the market outperforms you. But
01:36:07
how do you get rich? The only answer I have is slowly and that is figure out a way to make sure that money every month
01:36:14
is invested in lowcost index funds. In terms of trying to pick the next big thing, oh Christ, your guess is as good
01:36:24
as mine. I just don't. And anyone who tells you they know doesn't know. So, I
01:36:29
know how to get you rich. That's the good news. The bad news is the answer is
01:36:32
slowly and it requires some discipline. But people your age, just find out a way
01:36:36
to start saving when you're a teenager, 25 bucks a month, then in your 20s, 100,
01:36:40
then 500, then a,000. And regardless of whether you have a platinum record or a bestselling book or a podcast empire,
01:36:47
you're going to be fine. Uh, but I don't I can't look at a sector and say, "Oh,
01:36:52
it's AI." Well, AI is overvalued right now. I don't know. Your job is to find
01:36:56
something you're good at, to focus such you can become great at something which
01:36:59
commands margin. To show some discipline, save some money, to diversify like crazy, and then to let
01:37:05
time take over. Cuz I look at you and I think, "Oh, I'm like Stephen. I'm a
01:37:10
young entrepreneur." And then I look in the mirror, I'm like, "Fuck." And I'm
01:37:12
like, "Oh my god, I'm 5 years from death." It goes, but it happened in a blink. So
01:37:19
take advantage of that because if I gave you a magic box and said if you put like
01:37:23
you're making real money now if you put $100,000 in a box by the time you're my
01:37:27
age it's going to be worth a million bucks. And imagine that that that that box is like a second. 100,000 in a
01:37:36
second it's a million dollars. This to this feels like a second. So how much
01:37:40
money would you put in that box? >> Oh my gosh. Yeah. So the moment you have
01:37:43
some capital, just think about trying to at a young age show some discipline and
01:37:50
put some money in that box because it just compound interest is just it's staggering the power of it. But trying
01:37:58
to predict where you should invest other than investing in yourself, additional skills, certifications, investing in
01:38:03
relationships, trying to be as do as many nice kind things for other people, I think that compounds, especially when
01:38:09
you're younger. People remember people who helped them when they were younger
01:38:12
and maybe not that powerful. I imagine you're very loyal. >> The person who gave you 5,000 bucks, do
01:38:18
you resent the money they make? They made >> I actually emailed him this weekend.
01:38:22
It's called Alistister thanking him again. Send him a big letter for >> that because that person took a chance
01:38:26
on you. There was a certain amount of kindness there, right? >> It wasn't even the 5,000. It was that a
01:38:30
smart person said, "I believe in you." And that meant that I could go back to
01:38:33
my mother who was ignoring me and saying, "Look, the smart person believed in me and therefore it made me believe
01:38:37
in myself." That's really the investment they made. That's everything and they
01:38:40
took a chance and it probably was they wanted a return but what they wanted to do was help out a young man. Those
01:38:45
people >> your opportunity to make those investments as a young person whether
01:38:48
it's helping someone get a job being kind a kind a kind word a kind text telling them how impressive they are
01:38:54
whatever it might be that stuff it's like investing it compounds and you wake
01:38:59
up at 50 and you find those relationships are really powerful assets. >> Mhm.
01:39:05
>> So look I don't I don't have a silver bullet here. save money, diversify,
01:39:10
compound interest, invest in relationships early. Those compound too. >> What are the most important decisions
01:39:15
you made that resulted in the biggest sort of wealth upside for you? And they could be any kind of decision. It's not
01:39:21
like I invested in this, but just I don't know, a philosophy, a mentality and approach that when you look back on
01:39:26
your career, you go, it was that that that was the biggest step change in my money. Well, my superpower is I I I've
01:39:34
gotten shot in the face a couple times personally and professionally and I mourn and I get up and I go try and
01:39:40
raise money again and start another company. I had an e-commerce incubator. It was basically out of business 6
01:39:44
months from starting it. My e-commerce company that went public in 2002 went through restructuring, which is a fancy
01:39:50
word for bankruptcy. In 2008, I started a video delivery company that went out of business. So, I mean, you know,
01:39:58
people talk about their successes. I think generously I'm sort of like three,
01:40:02
four and two. I've lo I've had more losses than wins every time I've been
01:40:07
rejected from a school. I had my affections weren't returned from a potential romantic partner. I got fired.
01:40:14
I had a company go out of business. I had investment. I've always been able and I think this is a key skill. I think
01:40:19
you have to do whatever you need to do. Whether it's be around people who care
01:40:23
about you, exercise, you have to be able to stand in front of a metaphorical mirror and go. I can add a lot of value
01:40:29
to a company. I can raise money again and start a business if I need to. I can make someone really happy.
01:40:36
>> That's been my superpower. So the the seinal moment in my professional success
01:40:43
was a willingness to say, "Okay, I just got shot in the face. The whole world
01:40:46
says I'm a failure because my business I raised a ton of money and I had to call
01:40:48
my investors and say we're shutting down." That's humiliating. It's public
01:40:51
failure. I mourn and then I go out and I raise more money. I try another company
01:40:56
because only one in seven businesses succeed. So I started nine and I knew at some point if you work
01:41:04
hard enough, I mean you can't guarantee success, but so much of it is out of
01:41:07
your control. You just want to step up to the plate as many times as possible. You want to have a great swing. You want
01:41:12
to be in shape. You want to be a good person. But a lot of it is resilience. I have a lot of really talented friends
01:41:19
who came up through the alternative investments community. Masters of the universe making one, two, three million
01:41:25
bucks a year working for hedge funds in the '9s and the odds and then they went
01:41:29
out on their own, raised a bunch of money, hit some bumps and then closed their funds or they had a business. I
01:41:36
have friends who are entrepreneurs who left a good job and started a business and they get stuck. These are people
01:41:43
who've never known anything but success. They got into an Ivy League school. They
01:41:47
got a great job. Everything has been this. And then they hit a failure and they just get they lose their mojo. They
01:41:57
just get stuck. They can't get over it. They lose the confidence to go out and
01:42:01
raise more money. And that's the key. The key to success is getting shot in the face and then just getting up again.
01:42:09
>> I'm 30 years old. How old are you, Scott? I'm 61. Are >> you actually 61?
01:42:14
>> No, I'm lying. Yeah, I'm 61. It's the testosterone therapy show.
01:42:18
>> No, I thought I didn't think you were 61. >> I appreciate that.
01:42:20
>> Um I thought you were >> 62 and 61. >> 62 in November. >> If you'd said to me anywhere between
01:42:27
49 and 61, I think I would have believed you. Um so >> I'm sorry. Let me take that out. I'm 49.
01:42:35
Stephen, >> what is it that you know, you're 61, I'm 33. Yeah. What is it that I don't know
01:42:41
as a 30-year-old that I'm going to find out in the next 30 years that I should
01:42:46
know? What is the most important thing that I should know about the next 30 years?
01:42:50
>> Nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. You've raised a ton of money.
01:42:54
You're on fire right now. >> Be humble >> because a lot of this is out is out of
01:43:01
your control. If there's AI dumping in the US or the swore gets out of control
01:43:05
and the market shuts down, >> this goes away. Yeah. And it's not your fault, but nor is your
01:43:12
success. So when things are going really well, be really humble and invest a lot
01:43:17
in other people and realize be careful not to believe your own press. In 1999, my company was going public. I was
01:43:23
looking at jets. I just thought I was the man. I wasn't very kind to my ex-wife. I really thought a lot of
01:43:30
myself. And I I credited my character and my grit for my success without crediting enough to how lucky I was that
01:43:39
I was in the right place at the right time. So be humble when you're successful. At the same time,
01:43:45
when you fail, and I failed a lot, realize a lot of that isn't your fault, too. And forgive yourself and move on.
01:43:53
So a lot of your success and a lot of your failure isn't your fault. And when
01:43:56
you look back on your life, when you look back on the biggest disappointments, and my sense is I don't
01:44:01
know much about you, but my sense is you haven't had a lot of tragedy or a real
01:44:04
disappointment, at least professionally, it feels like it's been upward for you.
01:44:07
When you look back on the most disappointing things that happened to you in this decade, you're not going to
01:44:13
be disappointed about the thing that happened. You're going to be disappointed about how upset you were. M
01:44:17
>> so forgive yourself and realize this will pass because at the end of life
01:44:23
people wish they'd allowed themselves to be happier. They think I wish I had not
01:44:29
beaten myself up over that breakup, over that loss of job, over that loss of money. They're upset about how upset
01:44:36
they were, not about what actually happened. So nothing's ever as good as bad as it seems. and to really try and
01:44:44
embrace and I didn't do this embrace relationships and that is I got on a hamster wheel. I just never had enough
01:44:51
money. I I was my whole identity was professional and from like the age of 25 to 45 I don't think I established many
01:44:59
healthy relationships. I just didn't invest in them. I was always good with friends. I always stayed in contact. But
01:45:05
I kind of woke up in my early 40s. I just decided I wanted to move to New York and not have any obligations. I got
01:45:12
divorced. I don't say left my friends, but I had enough money. I was living like a caveman, just occasionally
01:45:18
leaving for food or alcohol or a good time. And I liked having absolutely no obligations and no connection to
01:45:24
anybody. I actually enjoyed it. And then I realized I started reading a lot of literature on happiness and longevity.
01:45:30
And I realized if I do this, I'll be dead at 55 because I don't have any
01:45:34
connection to anybody. And so I started investing in relationships, started making an effort to reinvigorate
01:45:41
friendships, really start started to think about thoughtfully about I want to be around
01:45:46
people a lot more. I was becoming very much an introvert and isolated. I mean, and I was like a poorer version of
01:45:52
Howard Hughes at some point, but so I would say really focus on as much as you can relationships and investing in them
01:46:00
uh in your 30s. I think it's super rewarding or it pays off. But more than anything, just forgive yourself
01:46:06
>> and become a dad. >> Well, look, I didn't want to have kids. So, and I think you can be happy without
01:46:13
kids. I kind of got forced into it. I was with someone who much higher character, much more attractive than me,
01:46:21
and she decided she wanted to have kids, and I said, "Well, I'm never getting
01:46:23
married again." And she called my bluff and said, "We don't have to be married."
01:46:27
So, I'm Anyways, so I didn't want kids. Uh, but now, and this goes back to
01:46:35
purpose. Everyone talks about finding a purpose. And the way I approach life, which was really screwed up, is I
01:46:39
approached it from a capitalist standpoint. I want more out of this friendship than I'm getting. I want more
01:46:44
out of this investment than I invested. I want to pay this employee less than the value they're creating. I saw
01:46:49
everything as a transaction that I wanted to be on the right side of. And what I figured out is that finding your
01:46:55
purpose is finding that thing that you can never get a a real positive return on. What do I mean by that? I will never
01:47:03
get a positive return for my children. There's they're never going to be up at
01:47:07
2 a.m. worried about me, right? I I they are costing me so much money. I don't
01:47:12
care how nice the senior home is that I'm putting them in. The amount of love,
01:47:16
concern, and anxiety I feel over my boys, it would be almost impossible for them to return that. And that's the
01:47:24
point. I finally have something where I feel like that sense of purpose. The most loyal, proud Americans are veterans
01:47:31
because there's no way America can really pay them back for leaving their families and risking their person.
01:47:37
That's an unparalleled investment. They'll never get that investment back,
01:47:40
but what they get back is purpose. And I didn't realize that finding something
01:47:44
you were so passionate about, whether it was a nonprofit or saving dogs from kill
01:47:49
shelters or getting involved in a woman's right to have bodily autonomy where you give so much that there's just
01:47:56
no way you'll ever really get at the kind of tangible ROI. And what I realized is when you find that, that's
01:48:01
your purpose. And I didn't realize that. So having kids for me has given me purpose. Um I enjoy it, but that's my
01:48:10
thing now. I realized that's my job is to overinvest is not to measure it because I'm just not going to get that
01:48:16
back. So for me, having kids has been my purpose. Also, building something with a
01:48:22
partner is really rewarding. It's like you travel a lot. Inevitably, I don't
01:48:27
know if this happens to you. I always get upgraded to the presidential suite when I'm alone. And it's like it doesn't
01:48:32
happen. If you don't have someone to share with, it doesn't happen. And the
01:48:37
most rewarding businesses, the most rewarding things in my life have been when you build something with a
01:48:41
co-founder or you build something with a partner. And when you have kids who go up and down in terms of their health and
01:48:48
well-being and they end up being good kids, which my kids are, and you've built that with somebody, that's
01:48:54
immensely rewarding. It's like the most rewarding businesses I've ever had have
01:48:58
been with co-founders where we build something together and it pays off. It's
01:49:02
just so rewarding. And when you don't build something with someone else, when
01:49:05
you build it on your own, it's like getting upgraded without anyone there. It's like it didn't happen.
01:49:11
>> So, so true. >> Yeah. >> What I tell any man, there's never a
01:49:16
good time to have kids. You want to be somewhat financially stable. That was my problem. The biggest source of stress in
01:49:21
my life was when I had kids in ' 08 when I went broke. That was hugely stressful.
01:49:27
And I think you want to make sure you have a not only a partner you're committed to, but I didn't realize how
01:49:31
important competence was in a partner because once you have kids, it's like operating a panzer tank division.
01:49:36
There's a lot of moving parts and you have to have a competent partner. But I
01:49:40
think if you're economically somewhat secure and you have a competent partner,
01:49:44
for me, I'm not going to tell anyone what to do. Having kids has given me my
01:49:50
purpose. Hands down the most rewarding thing I will ever do. That is that is the last thing I I will think about when
01:49:55
I die. I see so much emotion in you when you talk about it. Your eyes filled with
01:50:01
with tears as you started talking about your boys. >> Yeah. >> Because I know a lot about you because
01:50:05
I've interviewed you a couple of times now and I've read your books and so on
01:50:07
and it's um I find that fascinating because I don't know what it is. I don't
01:50:11
know what where where that emotion comes from because lots of people sit here and
01:50:14
talk about their kids, >> right? >> But when you the minute you started
01:50:16
mentioning them and the impact they've had on you in terms of find helping you
01:50:19
find your purpose, I could see the emotion in your eyes. >> Yeah. Well, there's and there's some
01:50:23
things that surprised me. one, I didn't fall in love with my kid. I I didn't love my kids when they first came
01:50:31
out into the world. You know, I felt a sense of responsibility and anxiety. I did not like having babies. I was able
01:50:38
to be selfish up to that point. I didn't feel this immense level of love and
01:50:41
support that you were supposed to. I fell in love with my voice. It was a sort of slow incremental
01:50:48
incremental thing. And like I mean for me and I think everyone's a little bit
01:50:54
different. The reason I'm just fascinated and obsessed with my older one is he's me. I look at him you know
01:51:03
the bad skin he had in his junior year. It's scrawny 6'1 130 lb. The way he
01:51:10
laughs I'm like when I hug him I'm hugging me at 17 or 18. It's like so
01:51:14
rewarding and that's why I love him so much. My second is a different species
01:51:19
than me. I observe him with fascination because I can't get over the fact that I
01:51:25
made that because he is so different than me. So I'm fascinated by him in just such a different way. Right? My
01:51:33
oldest is a pleaser used to come into the bedroom on a Sunday and get in bed with us and then stand up and say,
01:51:39
"Let's make a plan." And I'd be like, "Where are the cameras? This is like a
01:51:42
hall this like about Hallmark film, right? My youngest is a terrorist assessing the household for
01:51:48
vulnerabilities so we can strike more at our weakest. The only one recommendation
01:51:53
I make to anyone who has a kid have two because it's fascinating. The only thing
01:51:57
I can guarantee you when I meet someone with one kid I'm like okay the only thing I know about the second is it will
01:52:03
be entirely different. If you want to believe in nature over nurture have two kids cuz they just could not be more
01:52:11
different. And it's fascinating. We just haven't treated our boys that differently. I don't We just haven't.
01:52:17
Birth order, whatever. There's something in the batter. First Lady Obama, Michelle Obama said something that
01:52:23
really struck with me. She said, "They come to you." You know, I forget. I
01:52:27
think you've had that guy on the the child psychologist guy. We think we're engineers and that we get
01:52:34
to make the sheep. We don't. We're shepherds. We get to point them in the
01:52:37
right direction. We get to pick what food they have. But they come to you. Oh my god. I've seen that. And I I like to
01:52:44
think I always thought that my kids were going to be super into World War II movies and CrossFit because that's what
01:52:50
dad is into and they just want to hang out with me. No, no, no. The reason I'm
01:52:53
up at night looking at Pokemon cards is because my kid is interested in it. And what you realize as a dad is if you want
01:52:59
to be a good dad, you have to lean into their interests. I'm not fascinated by
01:53:03
Pokemon. That's not something I will do once my kid is out of the house. But
01:53:07
what you realize is you have to engage in their interests and get into it. And it took me a while because I was very
01:53:13
selfish to fully embrace that. I hated giving up my weekends. I liked having fabulous brunch with interesting people.
01:53:20
I liked going to St. Barts. All that went away and I resented it for a while. And then there's a certain ease and
01:53:27
relaxation that overwhelms you where you're like, I'm not trying to be fabulous. I know what I'm doing this
01:53:31
weekend. I'm going to some lame birthday party for four-year-olds and then I'm
01:53:34
taking my kid to the soccer game. And there's a certain ease about it that's
01:53:38
relaxing and liberating. Building some something with somebody, seeing the way they evolve is just fascinating. Just
01:53:46
fascinating the things they start asking you and you find your purpose. So I would recommend it to anybody, but I
01:53:53
also want to be clear, it's not oneizefits-all. Some people can be very happy not having it. So many of the
01:53:58
themes we've talked about today, especially at the end of this conversation, are in your new book,
01:54:02
Notes on Being a Man: How to Address the Masculinity Crisis: Build Mental Strength and Raise Concerns. I've had so
01:54:07
many of my friends, actually, both men and women, talk to me about this book because I think so many of us have been
01:54:12
looking for a road map on exactly these subjects, notes on being a man. Some of the themes are here on the back about
01:54:19
being kind, about being a good dad, and how what that means. Um, but a lot of the stuff you said about getting out of
01:54:24
the house and really attacking the world and who one should become in such a world. So, I highly recommend anybody
01:54:28
who is raising sons, who is a son, who is a father, or just wants to understand what it is to be a good man in the
01:54:34
modern world gets this book. And I'm going to link it below. >> Thank you.
01:54:37
>> All of you. It's been such a smash hit and it's it's really rare that my some
01:54:40
of my close friends will send me messages thinking about one particular friend about this book and I think it's
01:54:45
a testament to the impact it's having on the world. So, thank you for writing
01:54:48
this. I know you took a long time to write this book because we talked about it a couple of times when we had
01:54:52
conversations, but it is finally here. >> Who is it for? I write with only one
01:54:58
objective. I hope my sons read my stuff in 30 or 40 years and feel like they understand me and the world a little bit
01:55:05
better. That's it. And I tried I use that as a means of trying to be fearless
01:55:08
because there's so many comments and so many there's such a narrative out there
01:55:13
trying to shape your views around the orthodoxy that whatever your political leanings are, it's pretty easy to be
01:55:18
intimidated into having a certain narrative. So I try to write as if no one's going to read it but my sons in 20
01:55:23
or 30 years. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing who they're
01:55:27
leaving it for. The question left for you is in one sentence, what is the most challenging setback you've experienced?
01:55:32
And what's the lesson you want to pass on to others? That's easy. My mother dying and you can
01:55:40
never tell your parents how much you love them too much. Forgive them. And my mom died slowly, which is bad for
01:55:52
her, but it was good for me cuz nothing went outside. >> What What is What is the emotion you're
01:56:01
experiencing? >> I miss my mom terribly. I'm I'm a middle-aged man who hasn't gotten over
01:56:06
the death of his mother. Lie to my life. raised me on her own secretary salary. Gave me confidence,
01:56:22
everything. >> Is there a way to You said you're a middle-aged man that hasn't gotten over
01:56:29
the loss of his mother. Is there a way to >> I don't want to. I I think the recedes
01:56:35
for love is grief. I hope my boys feel the same way about me. Hasn't got in the
01:56:39
way of my life. uh makes me be more bold with my emotions. Yeah. I don't I see it I used to see it
01:56:49
as a problem. I went to grief counseling. Now I see it as a not a bug but as a feature.
01:56:55
The the recedes for for love are grief and anxiety. And so what I would tell every young person is I I hope they have
01:57:03
a lot of joy in their life. I also hope they have a decent amount of grief because that means they have people they
01:57:07
loved immensely. Amen. >> Thank you, Scott. >> Thank you, Steve. Good to see you.
01:57:15
Congratulations on your burgeoning empire. >> Jesus Christ, man. This is out of
01:57:21
control. >> You say this every time. >> Every time I come here, I'm like, "Where
01:57:27
are the helicopters?" Is is it's like pretty soon I'm going to see like a nuclear tower power plant
01:57:34
towering next to It's just amazing. and you're you're like everywhere. At one
01:57:40
point at one point I was on I was I was at the airport with my boys and I'm staring at this like 100 foot like
01:57:46
testimonial deal and I'm like make it stop. God Jesus. YouTube have this new crazy
01:57:55
algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior.
01:58:01
And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right
01:58:07
now.