Jeremy Boring, former CEO of Daily Wire, returns after a year to talk about the culture wars and his regrets from his time at The Daily Wire. He also talks about his biggest regrets from being CEO and why he left the conservative movement.
00:00:00.560Jeremy Boring is the former CEO of Daily Wire.
00:00:03.980After a year of being away, he is back entering straight into the podcast wars, the culture wars.
00:00:09.900Today we are talking about all of that.
00:00:11.620In addition to his biggest regrets from his time as CEO,
00:00:16.500we've got all of this and so much more in today's episode of Relatable.
00:00:30.000Jeremy, thanks so much for joining us. You don't know this, but I'm having you on for a totally selfish reason. It's not for you at all. It's only for me. And your purpose here today is to make me feel better about the state of the conservative movement and conservative media.
00:00:47.960I don't know if you're up to the task. I don't know if anyone is, but I've been listening to
00:00:52.700you. And as I listened to you talk about the problems, there is something underlying that
00:00:57.660makes me feel like, okay, maybe things are going to be okay. So this is a big question,
00:01:03.220but can you lay it out for us? Like, how do you see the way things are post Charlie Kirk,
00:01:08.020especially on the right, in the media, in politics, whatever? And how do we navigate it?
00:01:13.180where do we go from here, those of us who are on Team Sane?
00:01:16.960You know, there was a study that came out this week that talks about delusional optimism
00:01:21.000and how healthy it is. Essentially, it says that realists live much less happy lives and less
00:01:27.820successful lives, and that people who have a healthy dose of optimism, even if it's delusional
00:01:33.400optimism, tend to live happier and more successful lives. I think about, you know, when I was a kid
00:01:39.960in the 90s, you had Oprah Winfrey would put up like vision boards, you know, and talk about
00:01:44.500manifesting all of your dreams. And of course, on a spiritual level, it's sort of silly and
00:01:49.760superficial. But it's probably also somewhat effective in a really practical sense, because
00:01:55.080as it turns out, if you're hopeful about the future, if you articulate your goals, if you
00:02:01.040point yourself in a direction, you're so much more likely to achieve them. In my career, which has
00:02:06.460been very entrepreneurial. It's involved a lot of risk-taking, a lot of trying and failing,
00:02:12.380certainly a lot more failing than succeeding, though a fair amount of succeeding too along the
00:02:16.140way. I would say that optimism has been like a central component of what's allowed me to take
00:02:22.640the risks that I've taken in my life. And I think that the Bible calls us to a kind of optimism.
00:02:27.300You know, the command before sin even enters the world to be fruitful and multiply is fundamentally
00:02:32.940a command to optimism. It's a command to believe in a future that you don't understand, a future
00:02:37.580that could be a bad one, and yet you're doing something very hopeful and sowing into that
00:02:43.700future in both literal ways, but in the most important of ways by bringing children into
00:02:51.040that world. And so I think, you know, if you go through the entire book of Genesis, it's just God
00:02:55.540calling people to optimism, lift up now thine eyes, lift up now thine eyes. And I suppose that
00:03:02.180I try to approach, not always successfully, but I try to approach life that way, and I try to
00:03:07.060approach our political moment that way, which is to say, to the extent that we're called to
00:03:13.240operate in the world, to have dominion over the earth, to participate in creation, as I believe
00:03:20.340man is called to participate in creation, then we're called to have a kind of optimism. It doesn't
00:03:27.660mean that things will go well. It's not a, you know, yes, delusional optimism might actually
00:03:33.020help you have a successful life, but one shouldn't be delusional. One should try to have their
00:03:36.760optimism centered in something real. And ultimately, our faith is not in outcomes that we can
00:03:42.800control, but our faith is in Christ. And yet, faith as an animating principle is a kind of
00:03:48.700optimistic hope in things that we can't see. And so, I look at the same information landscape that
00:03:55.360you look at the enormous losses in the conservative movement in the last 18 months from essentially
00:04:01.420from the moment the the election was over you know within one week Dennis Prager had his fall
00:04:08.480then Jordan Peterson encountered his health challenges lesser but incredibly important
00:04:15.320and powerful figures behind the scenes like David Horowitz left us incredibly powerful and important
00:04:20.700Non-political figures like John MacArthur left us, and then Charlie's murder.0.72
00:04:27.180You know, those are—that's a lot of L's.
00:04:29.620That's an unbelievable amount of loss for one ideological movement to absorb in such a short amount of time.
00:04:36.500When you look at the prospects for the midterms are bleak.
00:04:41.180when you look at the division in Congress that we haven't had a single major, Donald Trump hasn't
00:04:47.720had a single major legislative accomplishment in the second term because Congress is so
00:04:51.820dysfunctional. When you look at the fact that the country is run sort of by executive fiat now,
00:04:57.200that we elect kings once every four years and they declare what the law is going to be in absence of
00:05:04.700a working legislature. When you look at the changes happening technologically, the AI
00:05:11.180displacement that we're obviously living through, when you look at the uncertainty in the market,
00:05:16.660all the problems with Gen Z, incredible challenges ahead of us. And yet, what I know is that if we1.00
00:05:22.900don't approach it with hope in the future, well, then our pessimism will be self-fulfilling.
00:05:27.680If you believe that the future is bad, then the future will be bad. If you believe that we have
00:05:32.980an active role in creating the future, then you believe, I don't know if the future will be good
00:05:36.860or bad, but I know it will only be good if we do good things. I know it will only be good if we
00:05:42.140sow goodness into it. That may not be enough, but it's the one thing we've got, and every other
00:05:48.980alternative is bound to end in ruin for us. And so, you know, in this black pill moment,
00:05:54.280I try to be a white pillar. I try to say, well, we can build the future. We can impact the world
00:05:59.700around us, we can affect change. God's going to do what God does. He can make a determination
00:06:05.980about how it's all going to end. But for my part, I'm going to be hopeful. And as much as there is
00:06:12.680to be pessimistic about, there's incredible cause for optimism all around us. It gets drowned out
00:06:19.300by the podcast wars. But the technological wave that's upon us, as disruptive as it will be,
00:06:28.500will probably bring about human productivity and expansion of human productivity that we've never
00:06:34.540witnessed. It may even dwarf the industrial revolution. It will certainly be the
00:06:38.680greatest change in human productivity that we've ever witnessed. And what that means is an
00:06:43.300opportunity to see billions more people lifted out of poverty. It means the opportunity to see
00:06:48.060our worldview promulgated in places that it's never been promulgated before. It means the
00:06:52.440opportunity to cure disease. It means the opportunity to go on new adventures as a people.
00:06:57.880So I think that all of those positive opportunities accompany the things that we're worried about, and a lot of it's just where we choose to focus.
00:07:11.800Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day.
00:12:39.880You know, like you, I wasn't present for the memorial, but watching the memorial, I certainly
00:12:48.240thought, you know, this may be the great revival of our time.
00:12:51.880and perhaps it would have been save a very small group of individuals who made it their mission
00:13:01.720to blunt whatever that positive spiritual moment promised. And, you know, in its own way,
00:13:13.460well, that's evidence of God as well. You know, a lot of the evidence of God ends up being negative
00:13:18.180evidence. God very rarely reveals himself directly, and he very rarely proves himself
00:13:25.840through positives. He usually proves himself through negatives. And I think that the presence
00:13:30.560of evil is one of the great arguments on behalf of God. Evil is a thing that we get to experience
00:13:37.920in the world, and because it exists, we're able to understand what goodness is. And we've seen
00:13:42.820enormous evil done by people who we know, by people who operate in circles that you and I
00:13:50.080move in, certainly. But I wonder if we were there at Pentecost. You read back on those events and
00:13:59.400you see them through the lens of all the history that's happened since. So we live in a largely
00:14:06.760Christian West, or certainly in the remnants of a Christian West, in which there's billions of
00:14:11.740people who claim Christ in one form or another without getting into the theology of what might
00:14:16.760divide us. And it's easy to sort of imagine Pentecost as the beginning of something and
00:14:22.760then a straight line that can be drawn from there here that's always up and to the right,
00:14:26.480but it wasn't always up and to the right. You know, Pentecost itself is a very small event
00:14:30.560compared to the population of the world at the time. You know, they hadn't even gotten to
00:14:34.320persecution yet. Stephen hadn't been killed yet. The church hadn't been driven out of Jerusalem yet.
00:14:38.840I've been saying lately of technology, particularly around AI, that when there's technological
00:14:47.020innovation, the negative impact of new technology tends to front load and the positive impact tends
00:14:53.840to take time to reveal itself. And so the classic example is the printing press. The printing press
00:14:59.600comes along and for the first time, really in any major way, we put the Bible in the vernacular
00:15:07.400and people have access to it who've never had access to it before in the language that they
00:15:11.760speak. And when they open up the Bible and first read about God's love for man, their very immediate
00:15:19.840reaction is, let's kill each other over sectarian differences. And we have revolution in Europe for0.55
00:15:25.34030 years of Christians killing Christians, right? And you go, well, that's, I don't know, 500 years0.95
00:15:29.900later, I'm pretty bullish on the printing press. I'm pretty bullish on the Bible in the vernacular.
00:15:33.740I think it's done a lot more good than it did ill, but there was a lot of ill front-loaded.
00:15:38.160And I wonder if that's not only true of technological innovation, but sort of a spiritual awakening too,
00:15:45.560that there is a kind of spiritual awakening happening in the country right now.
00:15:54.120But it brings with it a kind of calling out of the forces of opposition to God.
00:16:00.360And I wonder if we just have to sort of bear those between here and whatever the ultimate positive impact is going to be.
00:16:07.420And in a way, if that's not the call to faith, because if you could look and see Charlie Kirk is assassinated and we have God in America again, well, then in a way that recommends Charlie Kirk.
00:16:27.740He used Charlie Kirk in all of our lives.
00:16:29.620he's used Charlie Kirk in his death. But ultimately, the glory belongs to God. And
00:16:36.420so perhaps this is part of how we have to experience that, is that we have to go through
00:16:41.900a further darkness even after that beautiful moment that we saw begin to be born at Charlie's
00:16:47.820memorial. Gosh, that is such a good and simple point that, you know, I say this to my audience
00:16:54.220all the time. I say, God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch,
00:16:57.720And that that is not, you know, he's never looking down and wondering, how did that happen? How do I clean this up? How do I make this right? I didn't see that coming. He's never, you know, caught off guard or taken aback. And that's not, you know, that doesn't change based on the election year.
00:17:12.460But actually, when you're talking, I'm like, I actually kind of have had my mentality kind of wedded to the election cycle that I'm like, I think I did subconsciously think, well, if that revival doesn't happen quickly and it doesn't change the country before the midterms.
00:17:29.720I wasn't consciously thinking that, but I think subconsciously I'm thinking, OK, everything now needs to fall into place.
00:17:35.960it needs to change immediately. But even just your simple point about the Pentecost, I mean,
00:17:40.820gosh, as you said, that was a small event, obviously a very monumental event. But then
00:17:45.860after that, we had Stephen martyred, we had many persecuted and killed. We had Ananias and Sapphira,
00:17:52.760I mean, dropped dead because they lied. I can't imagine what the Christians around them at the1.00
00:17:56.660time thought of that. Like it was very rocky, very turbulent.
00:18:00.160I'm glad Peter didn't ask for a show of hands for who else had lied.
00:18:02.480Yeah, come on. But there's so much. And obviously, that's true. When you look at the history of the church, it's not like Jesus came on the scene and everyone decided, yeah, you're right. I mean, he was crucified. He rose again. He said, take heart. I have overcome the world, which must have been a weird thing for them to hear, going back to your message of optimism, considering that he also said, you're going to be killed. You're going to be dragged into prison. You're going to be persecuted.
00:22:07.880You'll rightly use that little bit of narcissism that every person who thinks that they should point a camera at themselves possesses or everybody who thinks that they should, you know.
00:22:16.680Yeah, Reagan said, like, you have to have a little bit of an ego to run for president.
00:23:28.320So you just have to keep that in check.
00:23:30.400It has to be subordinate to the mission.
00:23:31.700For me, the mission is the promulgation of the things that I think are true.0.90
00:23:36.920And because they're true, they're also, you know, if we're going to use this sort of Catholic
00:23:40.920description of the true, the beautiful, and the good, which I find really resonant.
00:23:47.140You know, true, beautiful, good. Those are the things that I've always wanted to do
00:23:52.480in my career, in my own unique Jeremy way. It doesn't look exactly like it would look to everyone
00:23:57.140else all the time. And I don't always rightly order those priorities. I can't say that there's
00:24:02.940never a time when ego becomes dominant or when desire for material prosperity becomes dominant.
00:24:10.920I don't think there's ever been a season where those things have been dominant because I've surrounded myself with other people who understood the need to rightly order those competing priorities.
00:24:21.380And so it's not as though you could say, well, in 2022, all you were thinking about, no, because I had people around me.
00:24:30.800Did you make decisions from a place of cynicism?
00:24:33.520Certainly I've made business decisions from a place of cynicism.
00:24:36.940Did you make decisions from a place of ego?
00:24:39.260certainly I've made decisions from a place of ego. But I try to make sure that I'm in a position
00:24:45.180where as an operating thesis, as my operating premise, the mission remains preeminent over
00:24:52.060my other priorities. And in this moment, picking these political fights that I've been picking
00:24:56.440since I've been back from my time in the wilderness and since launching my own podcast,
00:25:01.560um i've i've tried to only pick those fights that i think are essential for sort of winning the day
00:25:10.200for my values for winning the day for my central mission and part of that is showing people i felt
00:25:17.240during the time that i was gone in particular that these forces had sort of ascended in our movement
00:25:22.500and the average person didn't have good language to answer uh some of some of those new voices that
00:25:31.160Not that the voices were new, but new sounds they were hearing from those voices.
00:25:35.520And so I've been trying to give language to it, because I think if you empower the audience with a framework by which they can understand what they're seeing, it helps immunize them against the effect.
00:25:46.860Watching Tucker, he's an unbelievable communicator.
00:25:50.140He's far more skilled than I am as a communicator.
00:26:41.740against what otherwise might be persuasive.
00:26:44.440And that's what I've been endeavoring to give people in this moment
00:26:46.620is just sort of the tools that they need
00:26:50.400to process what they're hearing without being swept away by it.
00:26:54.420I wonder what words you would give to the seeming about face when it comes specifically to Islam that I've seen. At first, I didn't really have words for it. I just thought, okay, that's a weird part of the manosphere. It's like Andrew Tate becoming Muslim. It kind of makes sense. It's like you can spiritualize the fact that you hate women.0.91
00:27:14.800And so that makes sense. But now it's not just people who hate women who are doing that. They're very sympathetic to it. I've heard people say, oh, well, maybe it was just propaganda in my own messages. And, you know, on Instagram, I have a very conservative Christian female audience. I've got some people, anytime I talk about Islam, there are some people, few, but they'll say, well, why aren't you saying this about Israel too? Oh, you think Islam is a problem? Israel is a problem too.
00:27:40.740And it's a weird way to try to soften Islam.1.00
00:27:44.000I don't have a problem with criticizing Israel, but if I'm not talking about that in the moment, then I don't need to talk about that.0.95
00:27:49.700And so, like, what do you think this is exactly?0.81
00:28:00.900Now, I don't know if we all agree on that.
00:28:04.320Well, I think there's two parts of that that are interesting.
00:28:06.340One, you know, there are 15 million Jews on planet Earth.
00:28:09.94015 million, not 50, not 100, not 500. There are, you know, a billion and a half Muslims in the
00:28:19.160world, like to try to even just as an order of scale, like if every Jew is 10 times worse than1.00
00:28:25.280every Muslim, there's still a rounding error. They don't even count. And so the scale of the1.00
00:28:30.240challenges that we face in the West as a result of, let's call it just radical Islam. Okay, maybe1.00
00:28:37.260only 3% of Muslims are radical. If every Jew on earth is a radical, militant, racist, jingoistic,0.99
00:28:45.280warmongering, genocide in his heart, okay, there's still more radical Muslims, you know, by a mile.0.99
00:28:54.540Like you, you know, I find it interesting that we all seem like we have to qualify0.72
00:28:58.280support for Israel now. Like you have to say, well, listen, I don't always support Israel,
00:29:03.600but I think they're our ally, or I think they're—I try to avoid—I catch myself doing it because it feels like now you almost have to earn permission from anyone to say something positive about Israel.0.95
00:29:16.760But I'm trying not to do it because I just reject the notion that you can talk about Israel and Judaism in the same breath that you talk about Islam and the Arab states in particular relative to the threat that they pose to Western life.0.78
00:29:36.760You know, the West has been in some ways battling against Islam for 1,300 years.0.88
00:29:44.060I mean, it's been a massive part of the history of the West.
00:29:46.380Islam almost conquered Europe many times, conquered parts of Europe many times.
00:29:50.640Europe, you know, Christian Europe invaded into the Middle East many times.0.79
00:29:56.100You know, our Marines were basically created to go and fight the Barbary pirates.
00:36:35.260He's given the country some victories over leftism,
00:36:37.420but they're victories that exist in time.
00:36:40.160They're not memorialized in lasting legislation. Most of it's through attitude or executive order. And I think that this group of people has become more and more disillusioned with the democratic process itself.
00:36:53.080Yeah. And they believe that they can create this new coalition that essentially is very, very strict on social policy and is very, very left wing on economic policy. And if they do that, they can kind of enter a post-democratic future for this country in which we get a lot of the things that and listen, they had to pick a party through whom to effectuate that because we're a two party system in this country.
00:37:17.600And if you listen to voices like Joel Webin lately, he's very open about it.
00:37:21.120Like, well, we either have to take over the Democrats or we have to take over the Republicans.
00:37:24.740It's probably easier to get the Republicans to be socialists than it is to get the Democrats to hate abortion.
00:37:29.800And I think that's on a political level.
00:37:33.560I just don't think that there's enough people in the country to fill out that cohort.
00:37:37.540Like I think about something, someone like Nick Fuentes that I assume maybe would be in this camp.
00:37:42.580I don't think he cares that much about social policy.0.59
00:37:44.760I think a lot of people in this camp don't really care that much about social policy, and I don't think that there is enough people like the Catholic Integralist.
00:37:52.500Most of them are not strong on secure borders, for example.
00:37:57.180And so it's such a mishmash of a clash of worldviews, which maybe you could argue any political party is to some extent.
00:38:04.400I don't see that being a viable option for it being its own entity.
00:38:08.560I do see it tearing some people away from the right.
00:38:12.180probably not the left because i think they're generally happy with the people that they have
00:38:17.220in charge and what they're accomplishing but i do think for those people on the right who have
00:38:22.160taken the black pill who do think which i understand maybe not liking donald trump or
00:38:27.040not thinking the republicans you mentioned that they're so dysregulated and they're so
00:38:30.940dysfunctional in congress that they're like okay what did i sacrifice my social capital for
00:38:36.540What did I sacrifice these relationships for?
00:38:39.320Like, I went against my pastor during COVID and all of these things because I wanted to
00:38:44.300support Trump and accomplish whatever they set out to accomplish, and now they just feel
00:39:02.000I could see that being an appealing message to people who are just tired of Trump, tired of politicians, tired of Washington, tired of, you know, mainstream conservatives like us talking about some of the same things.
00:39:31.560I don't think that you don't think so. Like, do you do you feel that Tucker is really saying what he believes? Like, this is just how his worldview has changed. And he is saying the things that he believe, believes, or some people would say that there's no there's some like secret, nefarious, malicious thing going on where people actually are trying to get back at Trump or whatever. And they want the left to gain power to teach Trump and the right a lesson.
00:39:53.700Yeah, well, I don't know Tucker to speak to his personal motives. You know, I can only observe from the outside based on the things that he does. I have no, you know, is he bought and paid for by Cutter? Maybe, I don't know. But you know the way that it really works in politics.
00:41:44.680Because the most powerful coalition on the right is the evangelical coalition.
00:41:51.580And while there is a softening of support for Israel among evangelicals right now,
00:41:56.340I think that that softening is happening against a backdrop of enormous pressure.
00:42:01.040And that enormous pressure only really exists right now because we have political, because we've been the ascendant movement politically.
00:42:09.900Once you're in a minority political position again, you're going to have to go focus on the fights that matter.
00:42:15.240And when we go focus on the fights that matter and try to reorganize ourselves as a movement, which is going to happen, it'll either happen after defeat in the midterms or we won't have defeat in the midterms.
00:48:01.780You do as much as anybody. Matt Walsh on the trans issue did more than anybody. And yet we could be doing more. Of course we could. Of course we get discouraged. Of course we get fatigued and exhausted.
00:48:19.160Of course, when we do, the darkness has the opportunity to rise up, and yet there's a kind of freedom that we have to say, well, if you can do something, you probably should, and if you should do something, you probably must, and we fail at every point along that spectrum.
00:53:18.040I'm going to do what I've always done.
00:53:19.560Like I'm still exactly who I was before this thing occurred.
00:53:23.840And obviously it's kind of a farcical and absurd way to think about it,
00:53:27.780But it did really sort of illuminate for me the reality of, no, you just are you.
00:53:32.500You've always done the things that you do.
00:53:34.620You do them because you're compelled to do them.
00:53:38.360You know, whatever it is in you that drives you, you know, has always driven you down similar paths.
00:53:44.620And so, of course, I'm just going to do the things that I've always done.
00:53:48.760And it was a really liberating realization that I didn't have to solve my future or reinvent myself or become something other than what I am.
00:53:57.020I just had to remember that it's okay to deal with embarrassment in life.
00:54:03.760It's okay to deal with setbacks in life.
00:54:06.100It's okay to not be where you thought you would be or not be where you want to be, which
00:54:10.260are lessons that I knew very well in my 20s and 30s before Daily Wire because I failed
00:54:57.260They had all their friends over to help them do kind of the remodel before they moved in.
00:55:01.460You know, you'd come over and sand on the cabinets or whatever.
00:55:03.340And it was this kind of beautiful community experience of watching people who couldn't really play the game at the level that you thought you had to play the game, doing a thing.
00:55:15.740And it made my wife and I think, well, we should, if they could do it, we could do it.
00:55:19.960You know, and we started looking at houses in bad parts of town, you know, in very small places.
00:55:25.560And we decided we were going to take the biggest risk and buy a house.
00:55:30.960And there was a moment where we were driving and my wife said, you know, what happens if this doesn't work?
01:03:10.680And so it is true that we do live in a moment,
01:03:13.440Especially, I think, because cancel culture is abated during Trump's second term to a large degree. So you don't get a lot of the sort of – you don't have the need for an institution fighting the big media companies on your behalf or fighting those wars on your behalf that you may have needed in 2023 and 2022 and 2021.
01:03:30.580one. But I think what we'll see three years from now is a real return of the importance of the
01:03:39.760network. Because being the CEO is just as hard as being the talent. And being both is an almost
01:03:48.940impossibly difficult job. And so right now, I think a lot of talent has broken off from networks,
01:03:53.340and they're able to make a ton of money, because they don't have to support an institution,
01:03:57.320right they don't have to divide the pie at all but i think that's going to burn people out really
01:04:01.800fast and and not just burn them out but ultimately be untenable they'll either have to build medium
01:04:06.740sized businesses around themselves right that other people run in which case they basically
01:04:10.600are just a network yeah a network of one of one yeah and then pretty soon like megan they'll go
01:04:15.980well i have all this infrastructure i should start getting a few other people into my network
01:04:20.460you know growing or dying yeah yeah so yeah if you're the ceo if you're a founder set yourself
01:04:26.580up to make, to be decisive. And then you have to live with the things that you decided. And a lot
01:04:32.840of them will be wrong because of the pressure and the speed with which you had to make them.
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01:05:29.220whole free month of service. Patriotmobile.com slash Allie, code Allie. I'm not a CEO, and I'm
01:05:40.340very grateful for that, but even just, you know, making those little decisions, it is, especially
01:05:46.900when you're talent it is very it can be very paralyzing to be like well it would be so
01:05:52.960stressful to make that decision right now that i'm just not going i'm just not going to do it
01:05:57.940and so for people even outside of the podcast space your your metaphor of it being an organism
01:06:04.340living or dying is really good you can't really just be a stagnant organism how do you like what
01:06:11.880is your process for making decisions? The best decisions that you've ever made professionally
01:06:16.820when you look back and you're like, well, here's how I made that decision. And what would you say?
01:06:21.520The hard way every single time, you know? Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Like,
01:06:26.180you know, left to my own, I like to deliberate and I like to get my closest advisors in a room
01:06:34.560and just bat an idea around until it's time to go home and then come back and bat it around some
01:06:39.100or tomorrow. My wife has observed, and others have as well, but I talked to her about this
01:06:47.260very recently, that I tend to have what appears to be a lot of chaos happening up here. And
01:06:55.660it doesn't sort of like take shape until the last possible second. I take in a lot of information,
01:07:03.100I take in a lot of different kinds of arguments. I usually don't know exactly what shape the
01:07:07.740elephant is going to be. You know, like I don't know where he is. I just, I'm taking it in,
01:07:12.200taking it in, taking it in. And then the pressure of the need for a decision usually gives rise to
01:07:19.000what the vision for the decision is actually going to be. Of course, you're checking it by those
01:07:23.260priorities that you have. You're checking it by the needs of the company. But in the end,
01:07:29.420it always has to take a shape. And for me, that usually happens like right at the last second,
01:07:33.300but the thing kind of clicks into place and you see it.
01:10:45.940He sort of realized that this story existed.
01:10:48.220He was ahead of everybody else in seeing this story.
01:10:50.540He came to us and said, hey, I've got this angle, and I think that we could engage in this activity, and I think that it could have a really positive result.
01:10:58.920And he was right, and it was very clear to see that it was a great story, and it was a great idea.
01:11:04.260But Matt had written Johnny the Walrus, and Matt had made What is a Woman?
01:11:10.600And I said to Michael, I said, listen, this will give you a bump.
01:11:15.100You'll get a little extra audience from it.
01:11:17.640You'll get a little extra attention from it.
01:11:19.520you'll get a pat on the back but i don't know if we'll win but if we take this idea to matt
01:11:24.820given his authority on this issue given his stature um i think that we could score an actual
01:11:31.020tremendous victory with this well no talent wants to give up no i lost him the second i said you
01:11:37.340could be a little bit more famous you know he's like yeah so we do it right but in a network
01:11:41.440setting you're able to say listen when the when the idea is the perfect idea for you you're going
01:11:46.420to get it too and it's not that we i didn't take it away from michael obviously it was his it was
01:11:52.000his idea but i was able to remind him that there's a mission greater than our own individual successes
01:11:57.540too and and not even just stay it's not in in my opinion like what would be persuasive to me in
01:12:03.440that moment and i assume persuasive to michael because he's such a good guy and really cares
01:12:07.860about the bigger mission it's not just daily wire that he's thinking about he's thinking about
01:12:11.240the actual injustice that is going on and okay what's going to be the most effective and that
01:12:16.700speaks super highly i think to michael's character yeah and you know and matt took that because of
01:12:23.700his position but also because of his unique talents matt was just able to take that the
01:12:28.740places that that michael couldn't have taken that particular one and achieved an enormous success
01:12:34.200yes for the daily wire but that wasn't like a monetizable event right for the world that was
01:12:40.780That was for the world, that was for the country, that was for kids.
01:12:51.880A pastor once said, and I think about this all the time, and I'm just curious if you agree, that leadership is a commitment to being misunderstood.
01:14:26.340The fundamental job of the CEO is to say no, particularly in a creative business, because, you know, Ben Shapiro has 200 ideas a day and, you know, he bats above average.
01:20:30.100And so, you know, on one hand, I see that as a place where we can be really critical of ourselves, and we should be, and we should stop saying, okay, boomer, and we should be more respectful to the people who've given us our country.0.55
01:20:42.580At the same time, as you reflect on the challenges that the boomers faced and the things that they actually went on to accomplish, yes, myriad failures.0.53
01:20:54.260We're going to have myriad failures too.0.89
01:21:07.060And you just think, well, what can we do having been given this time of peace and prosperity, having had the blessing of coming of age in a time of peace and prosperity?
01:21:19.060I know people like, you know, there's wisdom in the idea that, you know, good times make weak men and weak men make bad times and bad times make good, you know, that whole sort of continuum that gets parroted online.
01:21:34.420But if you take that to its natural conclusion, then you should hope not to give your children good times, which, of course, is not what any of us hope.
01:21:43.320We're motivated by wanting to give our children the best possible life, the best possible
01:21:47.920future, the best possible opportunity.
01:21:50.240You know, the Bible doesn't say fathers exacerbate the frustrations of your children.
01:21:56.200It says fathers, don't exacerbate your sons.
01:23:29.660So, enormous successes to build on, obvious failures to navigate against, technological increases in human productivity, the likes of which we've probably never seen.
01:23:41.520And I know we're being told that the robots are going to replace us.
01:23:43.840The robots are not going—you might lose your job to a robot.
01:29:32.560We're not going to get uploaded to the cloud because the people who say that either don't believe or have forgotten why the world exists in the first place.
01:29:43.180And so there's a lot of hope in just remembering the very fundamental truth that God created man, God walked as a man, and God redeemed man.
01:29:53.620And that's kind of the point of the story.