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