The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1795 - Antonio Garcia Martinez

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day!

00:00:07.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night!

00:00:08.000 All day!

00:00:12.000 What's up man?

00:00:13.000 How are ya?

00:00:14.000 Thanks for having me, Joe.

00:00:15.000 I'm very excited to be here.

00:00:16.000 It's always interesting to meet somebody that you only know from their tweets.

00:00:20.000 You know, I only know you from your tweets, which I found very interesting.

00:00:23.000 And then I started reading your book or listening to your book where another person reads it.

00:00:27.000 And I've seen some interviews of you.

00:00:28.000 So I thought it'd be fun to have you in there.

00:00:31.000 Cool.

00:00:31.000 Have a little chitchat.

00:00:33.000 Great.

00:00:33.000 Thanks for having me, Joe.

00:00:34.000 My pleasure.

00:00:35.000 So you just got back from Ukraine?

00:00:37.000 I know.

00:00:37.000 I'm totally throwing a wrench in the agenda.

00:00:39.000 We're supposed to talk about cancellation or whatever.

00:00:41.000 But yeah, for a bunch of reasons, I just up and went to Poland and Ukraine to see what was going on there.

00:00:47.000 So this was just your own idea to just take a trip?

00:00:51.000 Not totally.

00:00:52.000 One of the gigs I have, I have a gig at a DC think tank and one of my colleagues who's done like real in the field correspondent work before proposed a trip and a bunch of people expressed interest and I'm basically the only one who didn't wimp out and went with them.

00:01:06.000 So it was just you and this one guy?

00:01:08.000 And we had, you know, drivers and fixers and stuff because I don't speak any Slavic languages and...

00:01:13.000 You basically need it to sort of navigate that world.

00:01:16.000 And also, in a wartime economy, regular transport doesn't work.

00:01:19.000 So you need to get around somehow.

00:01:21.000 And so we tended to have a driver, usually.

00:01:24.000 So what is that conversation like?

00:01:26.000 So when someone says, hey, let's go to Ukraine, what was the goal?

00:01:33.000 Was it just to see it firsthand?

00:01:35.000 Is there any information that you can get when you're on the ground that would sort of clarify the situation for you?

00:01:44.000 I mean, we can get into this, but I think the view that you see of Ukraine from the United States, I think, is so blinded by both American domestic political priorities and the whole kaleidoscope that is the Twitter experience.

00:01:56.000 I thought you have to go there to see the real thing.

00:01:59.000 And, you know, it's history with a capital H in the sort of...

00:02:03.000 You know, Francis Fukuyama sense of, you know, this is a real invasion, the likes of which we haven't seen in Europe in whatever, 70-plus years.

00:02:12.000 And it's just something that I've lived in Europe.

00:02:15.000 I have an EU passport, so I feel a little bit European in that regard.

00:02:18.000 So I think I engage with the story a little bit differently maybe than Americans do.

00:02:21.000 And so I felt I just had to go there and see it for myself.

00:02:24.000 So when you went there, was this idea related at all to business?

00:02:31.000 Oh, no, no, no.

00:02:32.000 So this was just for your own edification?

00:02:34.000 Well, I am doing a story.

00:02:37.000 So there's a publication that I occasionally pitch stories to called Tablets, a Jewish magazine.

00:02:43.000 The Israelis are doing a bunch of stuff on the Polish border to get Jews out.

00:02:46.000 And so there's a whole Jewish angle to the story.

00:02:48.000 And then also, so I have a sub-stack, which I should probably plug, I guess, the pull request.

00:02:52.000 What is it?

00:02:53.000 The pull request.

00:02:54.000 Pull?

00:02:54.000 P-O-L-E? Yeah, P-U-L. It's like a nerdy term.

00:02:58.000 P-U-L? Yeah, yeah, yeah, P-U-L. A pull request is like when a coder is actually coding a piece of software.

00:03:02.000 It's like they request that the main codebase pull from them. 0.99

00:03:06.000 And so it's like saying, hey, read my shit and like integrate it with your shit. 0.99

00:03:10.000 Oh, okay. 0.99

00:03:10.000 And so in some sense, it's like, it started as a, similar to my book, like, so I've worked in tech for a long time. 0.99

00:03:17.000 I've had a whole career in the advertising industry.

00:03:19.000 I was an early member of Facebook's ads team, which is what the book is about, which we'll probably get to.

00:03:23.000 And the thought was, I wanted to give a perspective on tech from the insider perspective rather than the outsider perspective.

00:03:29.000 And from there, it's gone into religion, culture, and then now even geopolitics as my interests kind of meander through the world.

00:03:38.000 So you went there partly to write about it for your Substack.

00:03:42.000 I mean, the only reason you can justify going, right?

00:03:44.000 Because again, and it's funny, Jay, this is one of the things.

00:03:47.000 If it hadn't been for this and also this other consideration, I probably would have pushed on to Keeve, actually.

00:03:53.000 Really?

00:03:53.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:03:54.000 But your producer, I emailed him from Ukraine.

00:03:56.000 He's like, dude, I'm here.

00:03:58.000 It's hard to get out.

00:03:58.000 Can we do this during Zoom?

00:04:00.000 And he's like, no, absolutely not.

00:04:02.000 And I briefly considered – I wasn't really going to do it, but I briefly considered just going to Kyiv and then pulling the power move of like, I'm in Kyiv.

00:04:08.000 I cannot leave.

00:04:08.000 We have to do it.

00:04:09.000 We would have to do it another time.

00:04:10.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:04:11.000 But I didn't want to run the risk of that, and I wanted to do the show.

00:04:14.000 And so I started hauling ass back.

00:04:16.000 It would be interesting to have you on Zoom with bombs going off in the background, though. 0.97

00:04:20.000 It would suck if you died on Zoom while we're in the middle of a podcast.

00:04:24.000 It would suck, but I have to say from the cold-hearted marketing perspective, it would be great for engagement. 0.93

00:04:29.000 Yeah. 0.95

00:04:30.000 Not for you.

00:04:31.000 Not for me.

00:04:33.000 You're going to capitalize on that.

00:04:34.000 Yeah.

00:04:35.000 So how many days were you over there for?

00:04:38.000 I was there about a week and a half.

00:04:39.000 So I spent a lot of time on the Polish border.

00:04:41.000 So getting to the serious side of the story, which I know we're joking, sort of guileless humor, but it's a very serious story.

00:04:47.000 There's a whole refugee situation going on.

00:04:50.000 So about 10 million Ukrainians the UN has declared are displaced.

00:04:55.000 And that means either internally they've moved around Ukraine or externally they've left.

00:04:59.000 And so a quarter of the country is basically a refugee at this point.

00:05:03.000 Wow.

00:05:03.000 I know.

00:05:04.000 So how many people is that?

00:05:05.000 It's like day 25 or day 26. What is the entire population?

00:05:08.000 It's about 40 million.

00:05:09.000 So we're talking about 10 million people that are refugees. 1.00

00:05:11.000 Holy shit. 0.98

00:05:12.000 Over 3 million of which have left Ukraine at the last count, which is a big number. 0.99

00:05:17.000 Wow.

00:05:18.000 And most of them are crossing the border with Poland, which is the country to the west of it, or Romania or Slovakia, some of the other countries, mostly Poland.

00:05:25.000 And so the trip actually started.

00:05:26.000 I flew into Warsaw, and my first experience of, like, this is not normal little Disneyland Europe, you go to the Warsaw train station, which tends to be the terminus for a lot of the refugees that come across the border. 0.63

00:05:38.000 And, you know, it's basically a refugee camp.

00:05:40.000 The upper floor of the train station It's taken over by families.

00:05:45.000 And every family has a blanket maybe half the size of this table.

00:05:49.000 And one of the interesting things about the Ukrainian refugee situation is that it's almost all, I'm talking like 80%, 90% women and children.

00:05:56.000 The Ukrainian government doesn't allow any male from the age of, I think, 18 to 60 to leave.

00:06:01.000 And also, many Ukrainian males are just volunteering.

00:06:03.000 They don't want to leave.

00:06:04.000 They want to fight for their country.

00:06:05.000 And so whether you're in the Warsaw train station or whether you're standing, as I was standing many times, at the actual border watching them walk across, It's literally, you know, a mother in her 20s and 30s with like two or three kids in tow, maybe a cat in a carrier with like a little rolly bag, and that's it.

00:06:22.000 Just picture an unending stream of that walking across the border. 0.86

00:06:25.000 They're walking because usually they don't – well, some of them probably did walk to the border, the most desperate ones.

00:06:30.000 They usually don't walk.

00:06:31.000 They take some conveyance, either a train or bus, but getting those through the border is basically impossible.

00:06:36.000 So they literally abandon however they got there and just walk across.

00:06:40.000 How many people are there that are like you, that are observing and just witnessing?

00:06:45.000 There's a good number of journalists, particularly in the western part of Ukraine, which is relatively safe.

00:06:51.000 It wasn't like I was there with bullets flying around me or anything like that.

00:06:55.000 I was joking with friends like, you know, I don't know that this is any more dangerous than walking across San Francisco's Tenderloin, to be honest, in the scheme of things.

00:07:01.000 So it wasn't like that dangerous.

00:07:03.000 But there's a lot of journalists in the western part.

00:07:04.000 There are some journalists who are in the dangerous parts.

00:07:08.000 Isn't Sean Penn there?

00:07:10.000 Yeah, I think he's been there this entire time.

00:07:12.000 Wild.

00:07:13.000 But there's like teams from NPR, New York Times, CNN, who are doing like real war reporting, which I was not doing.

00:07:19.000 I know a journalist was killed recently.

00:07:21.000 More than one, yeah.

00:07:23.000 There was a guy who, I think a producer who worked for Fox News, and then there was a former New York Times journalist who was killed.

00:07:30.000 And they were on the front line in Kiev, which is indeed very dangerous.

00:07:34.000 And so when you were there, you didn't have a specific goal other than to just kind of get a visual and experience it and sort of see for yourself.

00:07:45.000 What was surprising?

00:07:49.000 So to be clear, I did have a goal.

00:07:51.000 As a side thread, to me, I'm converting to Judaism.

00:07:55.000 So there's a Jewish side to my life.

00:07:57.000 And what the Israelis are doing... 1.00

00:08:00.000 So Ukraine has something like over 300,000 Jews.

00:08:02.000 And then, you know, the plight of what the Jews are going on there, I think, was one specific intent.

00:08:06.000 But you're right that broadly, I didn't have a specific intent.

00:08:09.000 What surprised me the most?

00:08:10.000 Two things, I would say.

00:08:12.000 One is, again, the scale of it.

00:08:14.000 Like it's literally millions of people leaving.

00:08:16.000 And I think, again, coming from the U.S., Europe has reacted to this crisis in a unified, just like all-consuming way that I think obviously you don't see here because we're not next door to it.

00:08:27.000 But if you go to this – again, let me paint you a picture.

00:08:29.000 And I've got a bunch of photos that I'll be posting on my Substack this week and next week.

00:08:33.000 You go to a border checkpoint.

00:08:35.000 The Polish police will only let you go so far, unless you're actually crossing, which I did eventually. 1.00

00:08:39.000 You've got this constant stream of, again, mothers with early bags and kids. 0.98

00:08:42.000 And then you've got basically a refugee camp there of everything from Polish Boy Scouts to Jose Andres, that Spanish chef who has all these food programs.

00:08:52.000 He has a major presence there.

00:08:53.000 Every stop, there was basically his world food kitchens, whatever it's called, serving up food.

00:08:58.000 And then...

00:08:59.000 Those who are ill get tended to, and then they have buses going to another larger refugee camp.

00:09:04.000 And then there they try to find rides for them and sort of sort it out.

00:09:07.000 And what's fascinating is that, you know, the Polish state has pretty good state capacities.

00:09:12.000 A lot of firefighters, police, soldiers, like there's a lot of...

00:09:14.000 But the actual care for refugees, like the food, the chocolate bar the kid gets, is mostly or almost exclusively volunteers and NGOs.

00:09:23.000 And there isn't that much top-down organization.

00:09:26.000 Like you go there and it's like...

00:09:28.000 It's like every little NGO or every little tribe that has some refugees that are coming out.

00:09:32.000 Like, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses are there.

00:09:35.000 So you walk across and there's somebody holding a sign that says JW.org.

00:09:38.000 They're not proselytizing.

00:09:39.000 I interviewed them.

00:09:40.000 They're not proselytizing.

00:09:41.000 They're just there for other Jehovah Witnesses that are coming across and hoping to help them.

00:09:46.000 Once again, you've got some Jewish charities that are helping the Jews that are coming across.

00:09:49.000 I talked to somebody whose child had cystic fibrosis and they have a foundation and they're helping because a lot of people are infirmed and those are the ones hardest hit by war because you've got a 24-hour train ride.

00:10:00.000 You've got someone who's ill and needs medical care.

00:10:01.000 How do they get out?

00:10:02.000 That can often be difficult.

00:10:03.000 So I think that's one big surprising thing.

00:10:05.000 And then the other surprising thing was I've been in conflict zones before, like the West Bank, North Ireland, the Indian-Pakistani border, places where things are a little bit spicy, but never in In a country at war.

00:10:20.000 And I think, you know, war in the United States, certainly in my life here, right, has not been a direct experience.

00:10:25.000 The U.S. has wars.

00:10:26.000 We're involved in a bunch of conflicts now.

00:10:28.000 Your life and my life don't really change, right?

00:10:30.000 We don't know what that is.

00:10:32.000 We've never had that experience.

00:10:34.000 Ukraine is having, like, you know, what Clausewitz would call total war.

00:10:38.000 All the resources of the society Are motivated towards one goal, which is kicking out the Russian invaders, right? 1.00

00:10:44.000 And that means that everybody in that society is either fighting at the front lines, every male is volunteered basically, supporting those fighters somehow, trying to source war material and stuff, which is very difficult to source, is volunteering in some capacity, or is a refugee.

00:10:57.000 Again, a quarter of the population is displaced.

00:10:59.000 And so all of society has one goal in mind, and it's literally fighting the war.

00:11:04.000 There's very little normal commercial activity, And again, I've never experienced that except through history books or films about World War II. Well, I don't think anybody has.

00:11:13.000 Right.

00:11:15.000 It's such a strange time because it's a time where you're seeing history play out in a way that we didn't think was going to happen again.

00:11:23.000 We didn't think there was going to be a country, like a large superpower that invades another country, and you're seeing it on 4K cell phone video.

00:11:34.000 Broadcast from thousands of phones and all these different viral clips that you can view online.

00:11:41.000 It's so surreal.

00:11:45.000 It is.

00:11:46.000 It's unbelievable.

00:11:48.000 I just saw a piece came out that in Kharkov, which is a city in the east that's, I think, Ukraine's second largest city, it's been encircled and besieged and shot at for weeks now.

00:11:59.000 Civilians are basically living in the subway, taking shelter, and they've been there for weeks, and they're just living in the subway.

00:12:04.000 It's too dangerous to go up top.

00:12:06.000 Or, I mean, the real, if we're rattling off the set of atrocities that are basically happening, there's a city called Mariupol, which is on the Sea of Azov.

00:12:14.000 It's on the coast.

00:12:15.000 And it's strategically important because it's in between two Russian fronts.

00:12:19.000 And the Russians are literally destroying the city. 1.00

00:12:22.000 They've shelled a drama theater where people had taken refuge in.

00:12:26.000 They've bombed a maternity hospital.

00:12:28.000 A lot of photos of that came out.

00:12:29.000 People are experiencing hell.

00:12:30.000 I mean, there's literally dead bodies in the street and they don't bury them because it's too dangerous to go up top and try to bury them so they just let them rot on the streets.

00:12:36.000 It is hell on earth that's happening there.

00:12:38.000 And again, as you said, it's happening, you know, it's the first Twitter war in which you can actually see these videos in real time and it's...

00:12:45.000 And it's not that far away from Europe.

00:12:47.000 No, it's very close.

00:12:48.000 It's right there.

00:12:49.000 I mean, you go from Poland, which I was in a town called Pszczemyszel, which is a little train junction close to the border.

00:12:55.000 Very cute, very pretty.

00:12:56.000 Had a little craft brewery.

00:12:58.000 You can go there and feel totally within the, like, Euro-American liberal realm of craft beer and normalcy and legal rights.

00:13:06.000 And, you know, you go a few tens of kilometers east and you are living in a very different world.

00:13:12.000 Wow.

00:13:13.000 Yeah.

00:13:15.000 It's so hard to wrap your head around when you're over here.

00:13:20.000 That's right.

00:13:21.000 Imagine going over there and then coming back here must seem even more surreal.

00:13:26.000 It is.

00:13:26.000 You know, it's funny.

00:13:27.000 Humans...

00:13:29.000 Can so adjust to things.

00:13:30.000 So I spent a lot of time mostly in Lviv, which is a beautiful little town, western part of Ukraine.

00:13:36.000 It used to be considered the safe city in Ukraine because it was relatively untouched by the war.

00:13:40.000 The night after I left, actually, the airport got hit with cruise missiles.

00:13:43.000 But before then, it was still a fairly open city.

00:13:47.000 There'd be air raid sirens every night.

00:13:48.000 People would tend to ignore them.

00:13:50.000 I got all freaked out the first time.

00:13:51.000 It was like 3 in the morning.

00:13:53.000 And the hotel actually has a basement.

00:13:54.000 And they actually have little beanbag chairs and stuff in there for guests to hang out in the basement as the air raid sirens go off.

00:13:59.000 I did it the first time.

00:14:00.000 The second time, I'm like, come on, what are the chances?

00:14:03.000 So I just went back to sleep.

00:14:04.000 And again, it sounds crazy, but you just get used to that.

00:14:08.000 And then coming back, it's like, wow, everything.

00:14:11.000 I came back to San Francisco, and I went to a little hipster coffee shop.

00:14:14.000 And the little hipster conversations are happening next to me.

00:14:17.000 It's like...

00:14:17.000 And, like, literally 24 or 48 hours before, it was like air raid sirens.

00:14:21.000 It's like, whoa, this is weird.

00:14:23.000 What is normal now seems weird.

00:14:25.000 It is weird how humans can adjust, right?

00:14:27.000 Yeah.

00:14:28.000 Like, I didn't go, unfortunately, for the reasons I mentioned. 0.74

00:14:30.000 But, like, I understand that in Kiev, which is much closer to the front lines and is much more in the shit, people have also settled into some sort of routine, right? 0.88

00:14:37.000 Yeah. 0.85

00:14:38.000 It's funny, one of the first things I saw when I got to Lviv, and I was so a little freaked out, right?

00:14:41.000 Because I was scared to go to Ukraine.

00:14:43.000 Because once you cross that border again, it's like, who knows what's going to happen?

00:14:46.000 I don't speak the language, different currency, transport is broken down.

00:14:49.000 You're just like there with your little backpack in the western edge of a war zone.

00:14:52.000 I get there, and there's like a couple making out on the street.

00:14:54.000 I'm like, oh, look, normal human life continues.

00:14:57.000 It's like, well, life finds a way.

00:14:59.000 I think it was you that I read a quote about, you were talking about Sebastian Junger's book?

00:15:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:04.000 Tribe, yeah, which I loved.

00:15:05.000 It's an amazing book.

00:15:06.000 It is.

00:15:06.000 But you were talking about, which conflict was it where the people- Sarajevo.

00:15:10.000 Sarajevo, right.

00:15:11.000 Bosnia and Sarajevo, where they missed it.

00:15:14.000 Yeah.

00:15:14.000 And I've talked to guys who've served overseas and they have similar stories where there's something about coming back here and Hurt Locker kind of touched on that a little bit.

00:15:24.000 It's like there's something about those experiences of heightened existence where every day is like legitimate life or death and then you come back to the dull gray drone of corporate life and traffic and they legitimately miss conflict zones.

00:15:44.000 Yeah, it's like that scene in Her Locker when he goes to buy cereal and he just has a meltdown because he can't deal with what cereal to choose.

00:15:49.000 I know it's weird.

00:15:50.000 I'll paint you another scene.

00:15:52.000 On Sunday, I was there again walking around.

00:15:54.000 Life seems normal, but then it gets weird fast.

00:15:57.000 Bunch of high school kids kind of horsing around, you know, Sunday sunny.

00:16:01.000 Like, what are they doing?

00:16:02.000 Just like a pile of dirt.

00:16:03.000 They're filling up sandbags and piling up sandbags around the statues of lions.

00:16:07.000 The lion is a symbol of the city.

00:16:09.000 And so they were like singing patriotic songs.

00:16:11.000 Everyone's doom scrolling telegram to see the most recent news.

00:16:14.000 Like, oh, Czech Republic promises more aid in the war against the Russians or whatever.

00:16:18.000 Everyone cheers.

00:16:19.000 And then they go back to like filling sandbags and piling up around these statues.

00:16:23.000 And it's like, man, it's kind of weird to have high school kids who can't join.

00:16:26.000 You can't volunteer.

00:16:27.000 You have to be 18. And so instead they're doing other things like filling sandbags.

00:16:30.000 And it's just, yeah.

00:16:31.000 Yeah.

00:16:33.000 The strangest part about this is not just that it's all playing out on social media, but it's playing out on social media and it's in a country that used to be connected to Russia just a few decades ago.

00:16:46.000 They all used to be together in the Soviet Union, you know, 40 years ago or whatever it was.

00:16:52.000 30 years ago?

00:16:53.000 So it's like to watch this all happen on the news And then to be there live, what was different about the coverage that you're seeing on mainstream media in the United States versus being there live?

00:17:09.000 Is there any distortions, clear distortions that we're seeing here?

00:17:17.000 Yeah.

00:17:19.000 And it's funny, coming back, it really pisses me off.

00:17:22.000 I told myself I wouldn't get angry on your show about it.

00:17:24.000 Because a lot of the Twitter rhetoric around the supposed bioweapons labs or, you know, the ghost of Kiev or some of the early memes that happened in the war that were proven to be, you know...

00:17:36.000 Right.

00:17:37.000 Right.

00:18:03.000 I think one of the luxuries that we have here in the United States, and it is a luxury, and it's good in some sense that we have it, is that we take the outside world and we project it onto our own domestic political neuroses, right?

00:18:14.000 And we almost think that the outside world is downstream of our domestic political process.

00:18:18.000 And that's just not true.

00:18:20.000 I mean, it's true in some cases, right?

00:18:22.000 And certainly the U.S. has impact on the world overseas, but it's just not the case that a lot of the Twitter rhetoric you see is remotely meaningful.

00:18:30.000 That's at a high level.

00:18:31.000 Another thing I think it missed is like the level, like the surprise that met everybody.

00:18:35.000 And like, I'll admit, I knew very little to nothing about Ukraine before this.

00:18:39.000 It's just not a region of the world that I know much about.

00:18:40.000 I don't speak a Slavic language.

00:18:41.000 I speak other languages in other parts of the world.

00:18:43.000 So to me, it was very novel to go there.

00:18:44.000 And I have to say, I went there with a good helping of ignorance.

00:18:48.000 But one thing, once I got there, I realized, man, the Ukrainians are super nationalistic.

00:18:53.000 They see this as their national project, right?

00:18:56.000 This is...

00:18:57.000 This to them is like a nationhood birthing moment.

00:19:01.000 Like they are committed to remaining free of Russia. 0.98

00:19:06.000 I'm not a military guy.

00:19:07.000 I'm not going to make predictions about the war.

00:19:09.000 I just don't see how the Russians can hold such a country. 1.00

00:19:12.000 It's huge, by the way.

00:19:13.000 It's like the size of Texas.

00:19:14.000 And east to west, it's longer because it's kind of a flat country.

00:19:17.000 So it's a big country.

00:19:18.000 I don't think the Russians came with enough guys to actually control most of this country. 0.90

00:19:23.000 I think most of the country...

00:19:24.000 It's funny.

00:19:25.000 I was talking to a hacker dude, like a nerd dude, who is like denial of service attacking a lot of Russian websites and trying to knock them down.

00:19:31.000 There's a whole cyber war going on, right?

00:19:33.000 You know, he's just like this nerdy kid who's on the anonymous chat channels and doing all this stuff.

00:19:37.000 And he's telling me this whole nerdy walkthrough of how he does it.

00:19:40.000 And at the end, he just looks at me with a steely glance and goes, we will win.

00:19:44.000 My fixer, my translator in Lviv, who, young gal, university student, studying computer science, like a college student, right?

00:19:52.000 Very carefree, very charming, very positive.

00:19:54.000 She would end her conversations the same way.

00:19:56.000 We will win.

00:19:57.000 There's a level of commitment there that I think the rest of the world, certainly Putin, has underestimated in terms of the Ukrainians.

00:20:05.000 So do you think that he thought he was just going to go in there and it was going to be like Crimea?

00:20:10.000 They would sort of roll in and everybody would sort of give up?

00:20:15.000 And they would control the state?

00:20:18.000 That seems to be the case, that it was supposed to be a decapitation exercise in which, you know, Kiev isn't that far from the border.

00:20:23.000 I mean, it's a few tens of kilometers.

00:20:25.000 They would just roll in, take out the current government, kill Zelensky or whatever, sideline him, and that would be the end of it.

00:20:31.000 And that is absolutely not what's happening.

00:20:33.000 When you see the trucks rolling in very obviously on these roads, and then you see these guys with missile launchers standing on the sides of the road shooting at the trucks, you're like, who planned this?

00:20:45.000 This is a terrible place.

00:20:46.000 Did you think that they were just going to see the trucks and go, well, we don't want any part of this.

00:20:50.000 Let's just get out of here.

00:20:52.000 It seems like a crazy planet.

00:20:53.000 Like, if you're expecting any sort of resistance that seems like suicide, just drive on a very obvious straight path where there's things to hide behind, where people are hiding behind it, launching missiles at armed carriers.

00:21:09.000 I mean, that seems to be the current Ukrainian strategy.

00:21:11.000 You don't see a lot of counteroffensives.

00:21:13.000 They're not taking back cities because that would require a lot of armor that they don't have.

00:21:17.000 But you see a lot of bloodletting and of basically hitting their supply lines behind the front lines in exactly the way that you're saying.

00:21:23.000 You've got a bunch of trucks coming with fuel and food, and they just annihilate the entire column.

00:21:26.000 They just take out the entire column.

00:21:28.000 I had Mike Baker on, who was a former CIA operative the other day, and he was trying to lay out what he knows about it from a foreign policy perspective from his years of service.

00:21:40.000 The way he was laying it out was not pretty.

00:21:43.000 When he was talking about the possibilities and the options, like how it could possibly play out, what did they think on the ground?

00:21:51.000 Did they have an idea of what could happen or how it could happen?

00:21:57.000 I wouldn't claim to know what the Russians are thinking.

00:21:59.000 I'll say this, though.

00:22:00.000 No, I mean the Ukrainians.

00:22:01.000 How do they think it's going to play out?

00:22:03.000 Do they think there's going to come a point in time where there's enough losses where Russia has to decide to either escalate to a nuclear option or leave?

00:22:13.000 I think the Ukrainian on the street just thinks that they're going to hold out forever and that the entire nation is unified and they're just not going to give in.

00:22:19.000 I think that's what the thought is.

00:22:21.000 And by the way...

00:22:23.000 Who came up with the genius idea?

00:22:24.000 The whole Ukrainian mud thing, by the way, having traipsed around Western Ukraine is real. 1.00

00:22:29.000 What is that?

00:22:30.000 There's actually a Russian name for it that I won't try to pronounce because I'll mispronounce it.

00:22:34.000 But there's actually a Russian name for mud season in Ukraine because it's a very fertile place. 0.73

00:22:38.000 It produces an enormous amount of wheat and other crops.

00:22:41.000 And it's just very muddy.

00:22:44.000 And so when you have the winter thaw, the ground is this completely consuming mud that if you step in it, you're sucked into your ankle.

00:22:52.000 And you might wonder, like, why are the Russians on the road? 0.82

00:22:54.000 It seems like totally dangerous because they'll get stuck in the mud otherwise.

00:22:57.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:22:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:22:59.000 There's all these videos of, like, a column of, like, four T-72s, you know, up to their tank tracks in mud, and they just can't get them out because the mud is that thick.

00:23:07.000 Holy shit. 0.92

00:23:07.000 And it's going to be mud season for months now, right, up until summer, until it dries out. 0.92

00:23:12.000 It's a very gray, like, at night it gets super fucking cold, but then it heats up during the day, and the mud just turns into ooze, and so you can't get off the road.

00:23:20.000 Right.

00:23:20.000 So what the fuck are the Russians going to do?

00:23:24.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:23:25.000 I read an article that was saying that they need at least a minimum of 500,000 people if they really wanted to occupy Ukraine.

00:23:31.000 Right.

00:23:32.000 So they would have to take 500,000 people out of Russia and move them to Ukraine to start running things.

00:23:38.000 And you'd have to run everything.

00:23:40.000 You got to run the utilities.

00:23:41.000 You have to run the government.

00:23:42.000 You have to run everything.

00:23:44.000 And that's more than 2x what they currently are.

00:23:46.000 I think their original strike force was like 200,000 soldiers.

00:23:48.000 So they need a lot more people.

00:23:50.000 I think what they're probably going to do, and again, I'm not a military guy, but they're clearly trying to consolidate in the east and join some of their thrusts on what they already control between Crimea and the Donbass, which has had a separatist movement for a long time.

00:24:02.000 They're obviously trying to coalesce that, and I think they're less obsessed with taking Kiev, in which they've made no progress.

00:24:08.000 I've stared at the map every day now for weeks, and that seems to be what's going on.

00:24:14.000 But like you said, there's always the odd chance they use either chemical or nuclear weapons.

00:24:18.000 I think Biden yesterday publicly said that the Russians are considering chemical weapons.

00:24:22.000 I mean that could be a propaganda ploy or whatever, but it's in the air.

00:24:28.000 You get a – there's a strange sense that the government is about to throw our administration under the bus.

00:24:36.000 I get this weird sense that as more things come out and more ridiculous Kamala Harris videos where she's saying things that make no sense and Biden, the laptops coming out and all this stuff, you almost get this weird sense where they're trying to just recalibrate and come up with a new strategy for running things.

00:24:59.000 The opinions you mean?

00:24:59.000 The United States.

00:25:00.000 Oh, the United States.

00:25:01.000 Like, I'm looking at how this is all playing.

00:25:04.000 I'm like, there's no clear...

00:25:05.000 When he's saying they're about to use chemical weapons or nuclear weapons, like, what does that mean?

00:25:11.000 And what happens if that happens? 0.99

00:25:14.000 And then you've got Trump saying, what I would do, I would show them strength, and what I would do, they wouldn't fuck around with me. 0.99

00:25:19.000 And you're like, this is terrifying. 0.98

00:25:21.000 Like, our whole situation...

00:25:25.000 It doesn't have any bright paths.

00:25:27.000 There's not like, this is what needs to be done.

00:25:30.000 This is how the Ukrainians can bring about peace.

00:25:34.000 This is how we resolve this thing between Russia and Ukraine.

00:25:38.000 There's no clear path.

00:25:39.000 Yeah, there seems to be no vision there.

00:25:43.000 Internally, what I can say is that...

00:25:49.000 The conversations that have been happening between the Ukraine and the Russian government is something that's followed a lot.

00:25:54.000 Israel has tried mediating there.

00:25:55.000 And so the fact that Russians are even at the negotiating table, again, I think that the Ukrainians are very pragmatic.

00:26:01.000 They're not foolhardy, but they're definitely thinking, well, we could come to an agreement at the end of this.

00:26:07.000 So that could be one resolution to it.

00:26:09.000 But then you're still next door to some people that killed tens of thousands of civilians over nothing.

00:26:15.000 That's right.

00:26:17.000 And then the whole question of, does Ukraine join the EU? NATO? I mean, this is a whole separate thread.

00:26:24.000 But I find it interesting that so many in the US... I've got a piece coming out in Barry Weiss's...

00:26:29.000 By the way, she says hi, by the way.

00:26:31.000 I love her.

00:26:31.000 Yeah, I know.

00:26:32.000 She's been on your show at least once, right?

00:26:34.000 A couple times.

00:26:34.000 A couple times, yeah.

00:26:35.000 So I'm doing a piece for her based on a Twitter thread that's coming out tomorrow.

00:26:40.000 One thing I've...

00:26:41.000 I don't know how much politics you want to talk about, Joe, but one thing I've been disappointed by is that In the right in the United States, right, much like the left, right, historically, really thinks the U.S. can do no good overseas.

00:26:54.000 And at the same time, the U.S. is responsible for everything that happens overseas. 0.65

00:26:58.000 And so the thought that—and, you know, it could be, like, metaphorical or literal PTSD about the more recent wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:27:04.000 But the thought that, you know, the U.S. shouldn't get involved at all and literally can have no positive impact on affairs on the ground in Ukraine, I find to be very— Very disappointing and disheartening.

00:27:15.000 It's weird that the right wing is the one that's turning kind of anti-US. Why do you think that is?

00:27:22.000 Well, I mean, I think some of them like the new right. 0.96

00:27:26.000 What is the new right?

00:27:28.000 Well, I hate naming names because I hate getting into these flame wars.

00:27:32.000 But the new right is like, I don't know, are you familiar with the National Conservatives or the NatCon conference?

00:27:37.000 People like Saurabh Amari, Patrick Deneen.

00:27:41.000 Oh, you know, you should have one of them on your show one of these days.

00:27:43.000 I'm sure they'd be happy to come on.

00:27:46.000 The new right, I think, is various things.

00:27:49.000 It's deeply conservative, typically Christian, right? 0.88

00:27:52.000 They're super anti-woke, right?

00:27:54.000 Because woke is like what the whole battle is about.

00:27:57.000 And they had a conference last year, the National Conservative Conference that I went to.

00:28:01.000 People like Rod Dreher speak there, again, Saurabh Amari, etc.

00:28:06.000 They look to a traditionalist mode of thought and they feel that much of modern vocalists, CRT, the pronouns, gender, all that stuff, they think is just dangerous to generacy and we need to abandon it.

00:28:18.000 And some of them...

00:28:21.000 I don't want to speak for them or pretend to speak for them.

00:28:23.000 But some of them seem to have at least sympathies for Putin's Russia, right?

00:28:28.000 And the fact that he seems to – he's anti-woke in some sense that he stands against much of what they dislike about the liberal West.

00:28:35.000 Trevor Burrus Well, it's far, far past anti-woke. 0.63

00:28:37.000 He's anti-gay, right?

00:28:40.000 I mean it's not just anti-woke.

00:28:44.000 It's like there's a – what they're doing over in Russia is very different.

00:28:48.000 Yeah, right.

00:28:49.000 And the weird thing is, even if you are—I'm not like a traditionalist conservative, although I do have an interest in religion—even if you did support that, But Russia isn't that, right?

00:28:59.000 Their church attendance rate is lower than ours.

00:29:01.000 Their birth rate is even lower than ours.

00:29:02.000 Like, all the ills of modernity in terms of, like, society falling apart and not having kids and all that stuff that the trads are obsessed with, Russia suffers from that as much if not more than the West, right? 0.69

00:29:12.000 So to what degree is Putin's Russia some sort of counterweight to the West?

00:29:16.000 I don't see it.

00:29:17.000 I think it's a LARP. And it reminds me of—I went to Berkeley grad school, right?

00:29:21.000 And again, I was not exactly your typical Berkeley hippie lefty, right?

00:29:24.000 And a lot of my parents are Cuban exiles who fled Cuba.

00:29:27.000 That's all you need to hear. 0.98

00:29:28.000 As soon as you talk to people that have fled Cuba, those are the most Republican fucking people and most patriotic people in America. 0.99

00:29:33.000 That's right. 0.99

00:29:34.000 Oh, yeah.

00:29:35.000 I was definitely that when I was there, even now to a certain degree.

00:29:38.000 And they go on about Cuban health care and this and that.

00:29:40.000 And they're living in Berkeley in some, like, hillside home that's worth a million dollars and eating in an Alice Waters...

00:29:46.000 It's like, bro, plane to Havana is right there, buddy.

00:29:49.000 If you want to go live in Cuba, like, off you go. 1.00

00:29:51.000 And I would say the same for those who lionize, you know, Putin's Russia is like, bro, plane to Moscow is right there.

00:29:56.000 But of course...

00:29:58.000 They're not talking about the reality of it.

00:29:59.000 It's a symbol.

00:30:00.000 It's a signifier.

00:30:02.000 It's like all these Hollywood stars that threatened to move to Canada but never did after Trump got elected.

00:30:06.000 It's a romantic narrative.

00:30:07.000 It's a romantic narrative that's just kind of fake.

00:30:10.000 Normally, I'd be like, who cares?

00:30:12.000 But again, if you realize the level of human catastrophe that's going on in Ukraine, in my opinion, polluting the discourse around that in a country that could impact that, I'm disappointed by it.

00:30:24.000 Well, there's a thing that happens with the right and with the left where they look at whatever position that the opposite is taking, whatever the opposition is taking and they find some way to justify the opposition of that.

00:30:38.000 It's blind faith in the ideology.

00:30:42.000 And, you know, they have these narratives that they all stick to that they know aren't accurate.

00:30:48.000 And to say that the other side has a point about anything is to concede some ground to what they think is the enemy. 0.99

00:30:56.000 And it's fucking wild tribalism. 0.98

00:30:59.000 It's so strange to watch play out because it's not... 0.99

00:31:02.000 As soon as you withhold information or distort information because it doesn't suit your narrative, then you're living in fantasy land.

00:31:12.000 And this is one thing that I've seen from both parties, from the far left and the far right.

00:31:18.000 And it's bizarre to behold because we live in a day where there's unprecedented access to information.

00:31:25.000 And yet people are willing to put themselves inside these narrow blinders.

00:31:32.000 And adhere to whatever these ideologies prescribe and whatever the thing is that you have to say in order to signal to the tribe that you are one of the absolutists.

00:31:47.000 You're there on board.

00:31:48.000 You're an asset.

00:31:50.000 You're a part of the right team.

00:31:52.000 It's bizarre to see because it's...

00:31:55.000 It's really just an advanced form of tribalism enhanced by echo chambers.

00:32:00.000 Right.

00:32:01.000 And it's anti-tribalism.

00:32:02.000 You have to be against certain things, right?

00:32:03.000 So there's this whole meme about the current thing being Ukraine because a lot of the people who are part of the kind of liberal borg that supported...

00:32:17.000 I think it's a little bit of projection.

00:32:19.000 Like, I don't think it's as in your face as a lot of the woke stuff was in the past.

00:32:22.000 But sure, it is the case that some people have swapped their, like, one cause for this cause.

00:32:27.000 But it doesn't matter, man.

00:32:28.000 Like, Ukrainians are still on the right. 1.00

00:32:30.000 Like, are you actually an independent thinker? 1.00

00:32:32.000 Are you really just a contrarian asshole? 0.99

00:32:34.000 And I think it turns out a lot of voices were not independent thinkers. 1.00

00:32:37.000 They were just contrarian assholes. 0.97

00:32:38.000 And so now they've just contrarian themselves into another position without really thinking about it. 1.00

00:32:43.000 And again, like, it wouldn't matter if it's just Twitter bullshit, but it's actually like a real war going on. 0.98

00:32:47.000 And that's why it pisses me off. 0.99

00:32:49.000 Well, there's a weird narrative that Ukraine is filled with Nazis. 0.53

00:32:55.000 How many Nazis are over there?

00:32:57.000 I don't know.

00:32:58.000 I do believe that I've read in multiple channels that there is some sort of a problem that they have over there with neo-Nazis.

00:33:06.000 But that doesn't mean the whole country is filled with Nazis.

00:33:09.000 That doesn't mean it makes sense that Putin entered and invaded.

00:33:12.000 And also, it's not the reason why he invaded.

00:33:15.000 It's not like he invaded to stop Nazis.

00:33:20.000 Right.

00:33:21.000 It's a little ironic to try to denazify a country whose president and defense minister are both Jewish, right?

00:33:26.000 Right.

00:33:27.000 But yeah, I mean, the Nazi thing in the eastern part of the country is real.

00:33:31.000 I mean, it's not an invention.

00:33:33.000 But again, I think it's one of those sub-memes in the Ukraine thing that gets played up for internal purposes that isn't terribly impactful on the ground.

00:33:42.000 When you see people talking positively about Russia and positively about Putin and haven't actually been there, how infuriating is that?

00:33:54.000 It drives me nuts.

00:33:54.000 Like I said, it's like debating hippies about Cuba 20 years ago in Berkeley.

00:33:57.000 It's like, dude, you're talking about an invention, like an illusion that you have, has nothing to do with reality.

00:34:04.000 Like, that's the weird thing. 0.58

00:34:06.000 Both on left and right, the people who actually shit on America the most and think that it's like the shittiest place on earth, in my opinion, are typically the ones that could never live outside of it, are the ones that literally you cannot imagine anywhere else except the American construct. 0.86

00:34:18.000 But that's also one of the beautiful things about America is that it allows people like that to form those illusions. 0.98

00:34:24.000 Oh, sure. 0.98

00:34:24.000 I mean, they're free to have whatever dumb opinions they want, of course. 0.98

00:34:26.000 Yeah, because you have the freedom to be stupid. 1.00

00:34:28.000 You really have the freedom to be delusional. 1.00

00:34:31.000 And if you want to have the freedom to be incredibly creative and innovative and be a groundbreaking person in whatever industry you choose to advance in, You also have to have the freedom to just follow stupid ideas to their fucking event horizon. 1.00

00:34:47.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:34:48.000 And that's one of the things that makes America kind of cool. 1.00

00:34:51.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

00:34:52.000 Yeah, it really does. 1.00

00:34:54.000 I mean, as dumb as people... 1.00

00:34:56.000 I mean, you have to have all of it. 1.00

00:34:57.000 And you have to have a lot of that stupid fucking thinking and cult-like existences. 1.00

00:35:02.000 They have to be there just so you can realize how stupid the rest of it is. 1.00

00:35:04.000 I'm going to take some of your French press. 0.99

00:35:06.000 Please, have some.

00:35:07.000 It's good stuff.

00:35:07.000 Dude, your coffee game, Joe, is incredible at this place.

00:35:09.000 Thank you.

00:35:09.000 Between the turmeric latte and this stuff and then, like, French press, it's amazing.

00:35:12.000 Black Rifle Coffee. 1.00

00:35:13.000 It's good shit. 1.00

00:35:14.000 Oh, is it Black Rifle? 1.00

00:35:15.000 That is, yeah.

00:35:16.000 So, I mean, how much has this changed your thoughts about, I mean, you know, people have You have priorities in life and you have things that you think are important and you have this view of the world and then this breaks out and then you go over there.

00:35:33.000 And that seems like one of those things that would be just a complete paradigm shifting moment for someone to experience the horrors of what's actually going on there on the ground.

00:35:45.000 So what is that like when you come back and how do you sort of integrate that into this?

00:35:49.000 I mean, you're a guy who's been a part of startups and tech and you're a part of Facebook and you wrote this crazy book sort of like burning it all down.

00:35:58.000 A little bit.

00:35:59.000 A little bit.

00:36:00.000 Exposing it a little bit.

00:36:01.000 Exposing it.

00:36:01.000 Well, maybe not.

00:36:03.000 That's not even a good way to say it.

00:36:04.000 Maybe just your own perspective about what that experience is like and it's not entirely flattering.

00:36:11.000 What's it like now?

00:36:13.000 Those things seem sort of semi-trivial.

00:36:17.000 That's right, yeah.

00:36:20.000 In comparison.

00:36:21.000 Right.

00:36:21.000 All the things we worry about seem terrible.

00:36:22.000 Like, I think I tweet joke that, like, Zelensky wished that pronouns were his country's biggest problem or that college swimmers were, like, the burning issue of the day rather than how to source enough, like, tourniquets so that his soldiers don't lose their limbs.

00:36:34.000 You know, it's weird.

00:36:35.000 I came back and, like, I know it's weird to say, but getting to your point, I'm glad you cited Sebastian Younger in Tribes.

00:36:40.000 I almost missed it because it's so...

00:36:42.000 I was like, I almost want to go back.

00:36:43.000 It's funny.

00:36:44.000 I interviewed two people from my step stack.

00:36:46.000 One guy, Andrei Liskovich, Who's a former Uber guy.

00:36:49.000 He's Ukrainian.

00:36:50.000 And he went back when the war started.

00:36:52.000 And as many people are, he's now like a sourcer for the Ukrainian military.

00:36:58.000 Not weapons, but everything else, basically.

00:37:00.000 Night vision goggles, body armor.

00:37:02.000 And he's living in, I won't say where he lives, it doesn't matter, a town close to the action.

00:37:07.000 And he's sourcing stuff for the military.

00:37:10.000 Another friend of mine, actually, former Facebook product manager, another tech startup dude, is in an ambulance crew outside of Kiev.

00:37:18.000 Wow.

00:37:19.000 And he had a very successful startup.

00:37:21.000 He doesn't need to be doing this.

00:37:23.000 And it hit him hard, the Ukrainian cause, and he's there.

00:37:27.000 And his life, I mean, he is really risking his life.

00:37:32.000 But that's what he's doing.

00:37:34.000 Wow.

00:37:35.000 Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have gone back to fight.

00:37:37.000 I mean, think about what it would take, the sense of loyalty and duty and self-sacrifice it would take for you to go back to the war zone.

00:37:43.000 You're already outside.

00:37:44.000 You're going back to fight.

00:37:45.000 There's a thing about the experience of being a person that was a part of the Soviet Union that is transferred down to your progeny.

00:37:55.000 It has to be.

00:37:56.000 There's an experience about the history of Russia, the history of the Soviet Union.

00:38:00.000 If you follow from World War I and World War II, it is a long, long history of horrible conflict.

00:38:13.000 They're prepared for it far more than anyone in the United States.

00:38:19.000 If the United States got invaded by Canada, You know, I mean, let's just, like, maybe Mexico is a better... 0.97

00:38:26.000 Excuse me, we're invading.

00:38:27.000 Yeah.

00:38:28.000 Yeah, Canada would be very polite about their invading.

00:38:30.000 But if, like, the cartels controlled Mexico to the point where they said, you know what, we have enough military, we have enough money, we've been selling people fentanyl for so long, we're just going to fucking take over New Mexico and take over Nevada and take over Arizona.

00:38:46.000 Like, how much...

00:38:47.000 How many people would fight...

00:38:49.000 I mean, how many people would flee?

00:38:51.000 How many people would stay on their ground?

00:38:52.000 How many mayors and how many world boxing champions like the Klitschko brothers?

00:38:57.000 And Lomachenko, too, is one of the best boxers alive.

00:39:01.000 There's so many people that are over there that are these prominent public figures that have flak vests on. 0.99

00:39:07.000 And they're over there with bulletproof vests and they're fucking armed to the tits and they're fighting. 0.99

00:39:15.000 It's a different world. 0.99

00:39:18.000 You know, Russia has this long history and the Soviet Union has this long history.

00:39:23.000 All of those countries that were a part of the former Soviet Union have a long history of war, a long history of conflict.

00:39:32.000 And I think that's why a lot of these countries are helping out the Ukrainians, right?

00:39:34.000 Because Russia was the big bully that dominated that part of the world for many decades. 0.97

00:39:38.000 And here they are trying to crush another country.

00:39:40.000 In Miami, for example, downtown, a lot of the buildings have the Ukrainian flag colors.

00:39:44.000 And it's like, what the hell does Miami have to do with Ukraine?

00:39:46.000 Well, a lot of Cubans whose country was behind the Iron Curtain and was kind of crushed behind the Soviet or Russian boot.

00:39:53.000 And they're like, what the hell?

00:39:54.000 I think you're definitely onto something.

00:39:56.000 There's something about people that have some sort of tragic history to their family, either directly experienced or subconsciously through their family.

00:40:04.000 Like, my family's had three sets of passports in three generations.

00:40:08.000 Like, there were Spanish immigrants to Cuba.

00:40:10.000 The revolution came.

00:40:11.000 They all fled to the United States.

00:40:12.000 Like...

00:40:13.000 This business of, like, leaving with nothing.

00:40:15.000 Like, my father used to lecture me about coming to this country with, like, literally nothing but three things in his pocket.

00:40:19.000 And so I think that marks you, even though I didn't directly experience that.

00:40:22.000 To be clear, I was born in this country.

00:40:23.000 But I think that marks you in a way.

00:40:25.000 And you understand it could all – like, all we have are, like, faded photographs of life in Cuba.

00:40:29.000 And a lot of these Ukrainian refugees, they're going to go through that exact same experience.

00:41:02.000 I'm in the middle Murdered each other at a scale.

00:41:06.000 He was talking about there's this one area where there was no more than 15,000 people.

00:41:12.000 They recorded 1,000 homicides. 1.00

00:41:15.000 I'm like, this is wild shit. 0.99

00:41:17.000 And how this mother was saying to this son who was involved in this family feud with this other family, they had been murdering each other back and forth. 1.00

00:41:25.000 He was screaming in agony. 0.99

00:41:27.000 And she said, shut up and die like a man like your brother did. 0.99

00:41:32.000 And so the guy closes his mouth and just winds up bleeding out and dying in silence because his mother was screaming at him. 0.99

00:41:40.000 She was so accustomed to people dying from gunshots that her own son dying in front of her. 1.00

00:41:47.000 The real problem was him being a bitch, which is fucking wild. 1.00

00:41:54.000 What Sebastian Junger talks about in Tribes, And these people that develop these intense bonds with people that they're in conflict with, you know, that these states of humanity that occasionally exist when people are in extreme situations where life and death is a daily experience, 0.99

00:42:21.000 it changes Everything.

00:42:24.000 It changes the fabric of reality.

00:42:27.000 And when we don't have that, for whatever reason, this is the grossest part about humans.

00:42:33.000 There's a certain section of society that seeks conflict in the most preposterous ways.

00:42:39.000 And as our society has become softer and softer, we get angry and upset about some of the dumbest things possible, whether it's pronouns or whatever it is, the current outrage du jour. 0.53

00:42:54.000 There's... 0.99

00:42:56.000 We're fucking weird. 0.98

00:42:57.000 Like human beings are very weird that we almost exist at our best state when we are in some sort of life or death scenario. 0.99

00:43:07.000 Yeah, I don't know if you've read Fukuyama's book, End of History, which is very mischaracterized generally.

00:43:12.000 But he has a final chapter in which he has a quote that I think about that more or less expresses what you're saying, which is, you know, humans will struggle for the sake of struggle.

00:43:18.000 And if, you know, democracy and liberalism won in the previous generation, then they'll fight against democracy and against liberalism, if nothing else for the sake of struggle, because they refuse to live in a world in which heroism of some form is impossible, right?

00:43:32.000 People mischaracterized that book because they thought he predicted some sort of liberal democratic utopia.

00:43:36.000 It didn't at all.

00:43:36.000 In fact, he warned that we would tend to revert to non-liberal and non-democratic ways of being just to recapture that feeling.

00:43:42.000 And I do think that there's something about liberal, and I mean like little l liberalism, not like the left of the political spectrum, to be clear.

00:43:49.000 I think there's something about liberalism that needs an illiberal antagonist to keep it in check.

00:43:54.000 It's only when you're fighting against some outside illiberal force that in some sense you can maintain the discipline that it takes.

00:43:59.000 And without that, It tends to degenerate into fights over pronouns or whatever. 0.97

00:44:03.000 Before Ukraine happened, you know, I was talking with a friend of mine about some preposterous woke shit and he goes, we need a good war. 0.98

00:44:10.000 And he was like half joking and we were chuckling about it. 0.99

00:44:15.000 He goes, we need a good war. 0.99

00:44:16.000 We need some of these blue haired people to see fucking rockets flying into schools and go, hey, this is the real conflict. 1.00

00:44:23.000 Now we're all united together and let's abandon some of this nonsense that we've been fucking squabbling over. 0.97

00:44:30.000 Fukuyama says the exact same thing in the last chapter. 0.83

00:44:31.000 It'd be good for a liberal democracy to have a war every generation. 0.99

00:44:34.000 If you look at Israel, for example, they have a lot less of this because they do have these wars every generation.

00:44:39.000 I have a good friend of mine who was my kickboxing coach back in the day.

00:44:42.000 His name is Shuki.

00:44:42.000 Shout out to Shuki.

00:44:43.000 He lives in Israel now.

00:44:45.000 And he was in America for a while.

00:44:46.000 He's an Israeli.

00:44:47.000 He was coaching at Majiro Gym in...

00:44:51.000 Where were we?

00:44:54.000 In the valley.

00:44:55.000 Tarzan, I think it was.

00:44:56.000 And he, I went to dinner over his house once, and you know, his wife and his kid are there, and he's playing bongos, and they're cooking, and he's like, everyone's dancing.

00:45:06.000 And I go, you're so happy!

00:45:08.000 And I go, I meet so many Israelis that are like so, they love to like sing and dance and party.

00:45:14.000 It's like a real-life version of the Zohan, you know?

00:45:17.000 I go, what is it?

00:45:18.000 And he goes, when you're in Israel, he goes, every day you could die.

00:45:22.000 He goes, you don't know what's going to happen.

00:45:24.000 Like, Palestine and Israel have been in this constant conflict.

00:45:27.000 You're surrounded by all these Arab states.

00:45:29.000 And he's like, any day you can die, everybody just party, party, party.

00:45:34.000 He says, when you're alive, you're happy.

00:45:36.000 And I'm like, that's a strange state that seems like we have this yin and yang of life.

00:45:43.000 And it sounds so cliche to say, but without some sort of antagonist, without some sort of problem, some sort of real thing...

00:45:53.000 To rise against.

00:45:54.000 People find nonsense to squabble over.

00:45:58.000 Correct. 1.00

00:45:59.000 And his thing was like, this is all bullshit. 1.00

00:46:02.000 Fucking party, party, party. 1.00

00:46:03.000 Like, life and death is the real issue. 1.00

00:46:06.000 And his thoughts about Israel was, when you're over there, man, it's real life and real death. 1.00

00:46:12.000 And the shit you're dealing with here is traffic. 1.00

00:46:14.000 I hate my job. 1.00

00:46:15.000 You know? 0.98

00:46:16.000 I hate being fat.

00:46:17.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

00:46:18.000 It's like these nonsense problems.

00:46:22.000 It's like, God, I wish we were wiser.

00:46:26.000 But I don't think we're really fully there yet.

00:46:30.000 If you wanted to look at the human race as a graph of progress, there's not that much time from the Vikings to us.

00:46:40.000 That's right. 0.99

00:46:41.000 From killing people with axes, from the time when someone showed up on your shore with a boat, it was a fucking disaster. 0.99

00:46:49.000 It wasn't like, oh, tourists, they're hopping off the cruise ship. 1.00

00:46:52.000 No, it was fucking maniacs. 1.00

00:46:53.000 Or call the UN. It's murder and rape is what it is. 1.00

00:46:56.000 That's what's on the menu.

00:46:57.000 That's all that's on the menu.

00:46:58.000 And that's what people did forever.

00:47:00.000 That's all they did.

00:47:04.000 God.

00:47:05.000 Yeah, and here we are with too much food and too much time on our hands.

00:47:07.000 Yeah, I mean, that's one of our biggest problems.

00:47:09.000 We have too much food.

00:47:10.000 People eat too much.

00:47:11.000 I know.

00:47:12.000 It's crazy.

00:47:13.000 That is one of the biggest problems.

00:47:14.000 The biggest health problems in our country is obesity, which comes directly because of poor food choices and too much food.

00:47:23.000 How do we get on diet from Ukraine? 0.71

00:47:24.000 I don't know, but it's a conflict thing.

00:47:27.000 It's all of lack of conflict.

00:47:29.000 In the absence of, you know, idle hands are the devil's playground.

00:47:33.000 That's a real thing.

00:47:35.000 And it's not just simply, you know, like boys who are bored find a way to light buildings on fire.

00:47:41.000 That's part of it too.

00:47:42.000 But it's like there's something about not having a real problem to fight. 1.00

00:47:47.000 You need fucking problems. 0.99

00:47:48.000 You need conflict. 1.00

00:47:50.000 And you either create your own bullshit, Or you're going to find something out there in the world that pisses you off and it's going to represent what the enemy is. 0.99

00:47:59.000 Because it's ingrained in our DNA. We have this sort of pattern where we seek out opposition. 0.99

00:48:06.000 We seek out problems.

00:48:09.000 There's a German philosopher named Carl Schmitt who was a Nazi, unfortunately, but his political theory was that the friend-enemy distinction is the core distinction in human political life and defining what is the friend and what is the enemy.

00:48:21.000 And if we don't understand that or recognize that, in some sense, we're fooling around.

00:48:26.000 It's so strange that we can't get past that.

00:48:30.000 We have some tools that'll allow us to recognize that, but they're not widely distributed.

00:48:37.000 Whether it's psychedelics or whether it's people that recognize physical culture and having a strenuous activity schedule in terms of physical exercise.

00:48:50.000 It's really important to alleviate anxiety and keep people calm and relaxed.

00:48:57.000 We were talking about this recently.

00:48:59.000 That's one of the reasons why they invented football.

00:49:01.000 They invented football to give people something to do that was a facsimile of war.

00:49:06.000 Right.

00:49:08.000 Back when the thought was that in urbanized society, we'd get weak and effeminate.

00:49:14.000 And so we need this sort of...

00:49:16.000 I guess they were right.

00:49:17.000 I guess they were right.

00:49:19.000 Religion could also help, by the way.

00:49:20.000 I think religion could be a factor in life.

00:49:22.000 I think there's definitely a God-shaped hole in the middle of liberalism.

00:49:25.000 And I think a lot of people—I think there's a conservation of religion.

00:49:30.000 Religion never goes away.

00:49:31.000 Taboos never go away. 0.99

00:49:32.000 They just change.

00:49:34.000 And the thought that there's some over— I think it was Walter Benjamin, or no, it was William James, who defined religion as the thought that there's some overarching order to which human society should converge, right?

00:49:44.000 There's some sort of abstract, thick order to the world that we should be sort of building towards.

00:49:49.000 And that just, in its coarsest, in the most high-level way, is religion.

00:49:53.000 And that never goes away, I think, for most humans.

00:49:56.000 You are converting to Judaism.

00:49:58.000 Are you doing this for a relationship?

00:50:01.000 It's funny.

00:50:02.000 I was thinking of wearing a kippo, but I decided not to.

00:50:05.000 A what?

00:50:05.000 A yarmulke like Ben Shapiro.

00:50:07.000 I would have been like the only other guest I ever did.

00:50:09.000 I'm not that observant, actually.

00:50:11.000 Yeah, so people ask about that. 0.91

00:50:13.000 I've got three Jewish kids, and I think religion is kind of like chicken pox. 1.00

00:50:17.000 You have to get a case of it when you're a kid. 0.59

00:50:18.000 Otherwise, you're going to get this life-threatening case of it later.

00:50:21.000 And so I wanted them to be raised with some sort of religious tradition, particularly in a society.

00:50:25.000 I think this is particularly bad in San Francisco and California, which is where I've spent my life for the past 15, 20 years.

00:50:31.000 Particularly in a world in which corporations are the only functional organizations that you see anymore.

00:50:36.000 Everyone lives, not all over America, to be clear, but in some parts, live completely atomized and dissociated from any organizing thing other than a company, and I just don't think it's normal.

00:50:47.000 Even though I've spent my entire professional life inside these organizations, I don't think it's normal.

00:50:51.000 And I wanted them to see something else.

00:50:53.000 And the baby mama to my third kid, who's Jewish, basically said, look, if this kid goes to synagogue, you're taking him, so you convert.

00:50:59.000 And so I called her bluff, and I converted.

00:51:02.000 And I think what I figured out now, and oh man, I hope she doesn't see this.

00:51:05.000 She's probably not going to see it.

00:51:07.000 I figured out that their level of religious practice is like the average of zero and me.

00:51:11.000 And so as long as I keep on going up, they're going to be more or less the midpoint.

00:51:15.000 And so now they're like, they went to like Purim.

00:51:17.000 Purim is this kind of very holiday kid's That was last weekend.

00:51:21.000 They actually celebrated that, which is good.

00:51:24.000 And so, yeah.

00:51:25.000 And then, aside from that, I think it's intellectually interesting.

00:51:27.000 Judaism is very bookish. 1.00

00:51:29.000 To be a Jew is to sit around on a Thursday and discuss dense texts and come up with arguments about what they mean, which to me sounds like a good time. 0.73

00:51:37.000 I know it's a little strange, but that's what being a Jew is.

00:51:40.000 So, yeah, I kind of signed up for it, and it's been interesting so far.

00:51:42.000 And you just...

00:51:44.000 So you had a relationship with a woman who was Jewish, and she raised...

00:51:48.000 Two different women. 0.99

00:51:49.000 Three kids.

00:51:50.000 You've got a taste.

00:51:51.000 You have a thing that you like.

00:51:53.000 You have like a specific type.

00:51:55.000 You know, I don't know if I'd phrase it that way, Joe, but yeah, you could.

00:51:57.000 You could.

00:51:58.000 Yeah, there's what you like.

00:52:01.000 You like Jewish ladies. 1.00

00:52:03.000 So when that's the case, if the mother's observant, the children wind up being raised as Jewish. 0.98

00:52:09.000 And that's the thing about Jews, that the family raises the children based on the mother's religion, correct? 1.00

00:52:17.000 That's the formal religious definition.

00:52:19.000 Most of the time.

00:52:20.000 Yeah, I have an uncle that converted.

00:52:22.000 My uncle Sal converted to Judaism.

00:52:24.000 He married a Jewish woman.

00:52:24.000 Yes, married a Jewish woman, raised his children Jewish.

00:52:27.000 And, you know, it was interesting watching him because I was young at the time.

00:52:31.000 I was like...

00:52:33.000 I think I was seven or eight when he was going through this.

00:52:36.000 And so it was interesting to watch, you know, like he had to take classes and go through the whole deal.

00:52:41.000 It's like getting a master's degree. 0.96

00:52:42.000 It's ridiculous. 0.61

00:52:42.000 And you talk to the rabbi and then it's like, dude, when do I graduate? 0.61

00:52:44.000 He's like, oh, here's another 10 books to read.

00:52:45.000 And you just keep on going.

00:52:46.000 It was like doing a PhD.

00:52:47.000 It was complex.

00:52:48.000 Yeah.

00:52:49.000 And so how do you have the time to do that?

00:52:51.000 It was kind of my COVID project, to be honest.

00:52:54.000 The branch of Judaism I'm in is not totally against using electronics on Shabbat and stuff.

00:52:59.000 Some of the actual ceremonies are actually live-streamed.

00:53:01.000 And so you can participate even remotely.

00:53:04.000 Ben Shapiro told me he has to keep the lights on on Friday so that they're there on Saturday.

00:53:10.000 I'm like, what?

00:53:11.000 That's cheating.

00:53:12.000 It's funny.

00:53:12.000 I've interviewed him.

00:53:12.000 We've talked about this.

00:53:13.000 So he's modern orthodox.

00:53:14.000 And what that means is it's kind of like what Trump's son-in-law was.

00:53:18.000 He's...

00:53:19.000 You know, like hardcore, full-on Jewish, but he's, you know, obviously he's integrated with modern society. 0.79

00:53:23.000 He's not living in a separate society.

00:53:25.000 But the Shabbat thing, Yeah, there's this restriction, and as soon as I mention anything Jewish, there's going to be like 100 rabbis in my mentions commenting on this, but that's the nature of Judaism. 0.84

00:53:34.000 There's restrictions around lighting a fire on Saturday, and electricity has been mapped to the fire restriction.

00:53:41.000 And so you've probably never had this experience.

00:53:42.000 I don't know if you've lived in New York, but if you go to a hospital in New York after sundown on Friday, you'll get in the elevator, and it's like you push the buttons. 0.99

00:53:49.000 They don't do shit. 0.90

00:53:50.000 The thing stops at every floor because you can't... 0.98

00:53:53.000 You can use a thing that's been left on that would work even if you did nothing, but you can't make it work.

00:53:58.000 It's really complex.

00:54:00.000 That's not complex. 1.00

00:54:01.000 That's ridiculous because you're using a fucking elevator. 1.00

00:54:03.000 Take the goddamn stairs if you're so committed. 1.00

00:54:06.000 Take the stairs. 1.00

00:54:08.000 People can do it.

00:54:09.000 Well, in Miami, real estate for the lower floor condos is more expensive if it's like a Jewish build because you have to go up the higher stores. 1.00

00:54:17.000 Come on, it's kind of silly. 0.90

00:54:19.000 Here's the other thing I would say. 1.00

00:54:20.000 When people talk, it's like, what the fuck is this religion thing they think is crazy? 0.98

00:54:25.000 The one thing that's weird about talking about religion to secular people is that, like, the model for religion in this country, right, is Christianity, typically. 0.99

00:54:31.000 Not just Christianity, Protestant Christianity.

00:54:34.000 Not just Protestant Christianity, evangelical Protestant Christianity.

00:54:37.000 Like, if you're not a practicing Christian and you've got, like, Christianity thrust in your face, it's like some televangelist or somebody or somebody wants to ban a book in Texas.

00:54:45.000 And so, like, somehow that becomes the expression of religion in society.

00:54:49.000 And for obvious reasons, Judaism is very different, right? 1.00

00:54:52.000 In Judaism, like... 1.00

00:54:54.000 The wonky term would be orthopraxic.

00:54:56.000 A Jew is as a Jew does. 1.00

00:54:57.000 So if you're like Ben Shapiro and you don't fucking flip the light switch on Saturdays and you follow the kosher laws and you do all this, that is being a Jew. 1.00

00:55:04.000 You don't necessarily need to believe in God or have a deep faith relationship. 0.98

00:55:07.000 There's no Jesus, obviously.

00:55:10.000 And so it's more a practice, a lifestyle, and a community more than anything else.

00:55:14.000 And it's less about your personal relationship.

00:55:17.000 It just doesn't matter.

00:55:18.000 I think there's a default setting that people have to adhere to some sort of orthodoxy.

00:55:23.000 Yeah, of course.

00:55:24.000 And I think that's one of the reasons why when you look at highly educated, like tech people, for example, it's a great example.

00:55:33.000 I think there's a reason why they've adhered so strongly to this...

00:55:40.000 Like, sort of hardcore version of progressive thinking, which you would call woke, right?

00:55:46.000 It's permeated these atheist communities.

00:55:50.000 And I don't think that's not a mistake.

00:55:54.000 I mean, that seems very clear that human beings have this default setting to follow this scaffolding of morals and ethics and behavior.

00:56:04.000 And it doesn't necessarily have to make sense.

00:56:06.000 Like, the elevator thing doesn't make sense. 0.99

00:56:07.000 Well, neither does a lot of the shit that people on the left adhere to. 1.00

00:56:12.000 Like, the fucking transgender swimmer thing. 1.00

00:56:15.000 That doesn't make sense. 1.00

00:56:17.000 Like, there's reasons why we have males versus females competing, but there's this line that people will draw, like, that's a woman. 1.00

00:56:24.000 And they'll just say that, flat-out, hardcore.

00:56:27.000 They start...

00:56:29.000 They start making these distinctions that are based on this rigid ideology rather than based on facts and reality.

00:56:37.000 But they'll say it, and they'll say it from a position where, you know, hey, I'm an atheist, I'm fact-based, I believe in trusting the science.

00:56:46.000 Except for some things.

00:56:47.000 And it's really lack of religion.

00:56:49.000 I think you're picking up on...

00:56:51.000 That's exactly right.

00:56:51.000 I mean, I think...

00:56:52.000 I've been in Silicon Valley for over a decade now.

00:56:55.000 It's saturated with religion, actually. 0.95

00:56:57.000 And, you know, they'll laugh at you trying to keep kosher or whatever, and then they'll go on for six fucking hours about their weird little keto diet or whatever that they're following religiously. 0.95

00:57:05.000 You know, it's funny.

00:57:06.000 I interviewed a Berkeley professor, sociologist named Carolyn Chen, who wrote a book called Work, Pray, Code that's kind of a sociological take on this.

00:57:12.000 And she mentions how so many people...

00:57:15.000 Come to startup life and are formerly religious but then adopt this new religion. 0.96

00:57:19.000 And it's very much one of self-actualization.

00:57:21.000 A lot of sort of, you know, white person Buddhism layered on top of it.

00:57:26.000 You know, a lot of LinkedIn posting about hustle porn, about you getting more productive. 0.95

00:57:31.000 And there's deep religiosity there. 0.95

00:57:33.000 Hustle porn is such a good term. 0.99

00:57:35.000 Yeah, I hate it. 0.98

00:57:37.000 It's what it is.

00:57:38.000 I know. 0.98

00:57:38.000 It is hustle porn. 0.98

00:57:39.000 It's hustle porn. 0.98

00:57:40.000 God, there's so much of that. 0.94

00:57:42.000 There's so much of that on Instagram.

00:57:43.000 It's kind of cute.

00:57:45.000 On Twitter now, too. 0.99

00:57:46.000 It sucks. 0.99

00:57:46.000 Really? 0.99

00:57:47.000 If you overpost hustle porn, I just mute you. 0.99

00:57:49.000 Yeah, I'm just done with it. 0.97

00:57:51.000 Hustle porn is such a weird thing to do.

00:57:53.000 But I guess sometimes I do it here.

00:57:55.000 I guess sometimes I talk about motivation and what's necessary to achieve success.

00:58:02.000 But I think I do it based on my personal experiences and what I've learned that I think that you could tell people.

00:58:07.000 I think there's a lot of hustle porn that's just like people saying things because they think that it's going to resonate with folks and it's going to get them a lot of likes.

00:58:16.000 And it's going to, you know, like they haven't really done anything.

00:58:18.000 There's a lot of, I haven't done anything, but I'm going to show you how to do things, people.

00:58:22.000 Which is a weird part of hustle porn.

00:58:23.000 They're called venture capitalists.

00:58:25.000 That's what they're called. 0.70

00:58:26.000 The hustle porn community.

00:58:28.000 There's so much of that, though.

00:58:30.000 God, there's so much of it.

00:58:31.000 Can I ask you a question?

00:58:32.000 Yes, please.

00:58:33.000 People who have done very well.

00:58:34.000 I asked this question to Mark Andreessen about the web, the guy who...

00:58:37.000 Basically invented the browser and the web as we know it.

00:58:39.000 So I'll ask you the same question.

00:58:40.000 Did you think this, the Joe Rogan experience, would get as big as it has? 0.99

00:58:44.000 No fucking chance. 0.99

00:58:45.000 I still don't believe it. 1.00

00:58:47.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:58:48.000 Because you have like over 10 million downloads, which, and I'd love to address this if you want to talk about your show and stuff too, but that's greater viewership than all the big network shows put together, right?

00:59:00.000 You have an enormous audience, but you never thought that would happen when you started this.

00:59:05.000 I've done nothing to try to promote this show.

00:59:08.000 I mean, really.

00:59:09.000 I've never gone on another show and said, please watch my show.

00:59:12.000 I've never taken ads out anywhere.

00:59:15.000 I've never done anything.

00:59:17.000 We've existed like Jamie and I have existed in this strange vacuum while this show has sort of propagated and it's spread its way through the world and We haven't done anything different and I haven't done anything different in terms of the way I do it other than Get better at it get better at communicating get better at listening get better at you know researching topics and asking questions and You know,

00:59:42.000 I think generally it's a skill.

00:59:43.000 I think it doesn't seem like it's a skill because it's something that everybody does.

00:59:48.000 We all have conversations.

00:59:49.000 But there's a skill to having conversations that are pleasing to the ear.

00:59:53.000 And that it's similar to a lot of other art forms.

00:59:57.000 That once you start sort of unpeeling it, you get a better sense of what it is.

01:00:03.000 And over the many, many, many hours that I've done this, you've gotten better at it.

01:00:08.000 I don't understand.

01:00:10.000 We've had this conversation too recently. 0.98

01:00:11.000 Why the fuck hasn't anybody else done it like this? 0.98

01:00:15.000 That doesn't make any sense to me. 0.99

01:00:16.000 What I'm doing is not that crazy.

01:00:19.000 Why is it so popular?

01:00:20.000 I really don't know.

01:00:22.000 I genuinely don't know.

01:00:24.000 And it's shocking to me.

01:00:27.000 Back in the day when it first started getting big, I remember me and...

01:00:35.000 I think it was Brian Redband.

01:00:36.000 He goes, do you know how many downloads that last episode got?

01:00:39.000 And I'm like, how many?

01:00:40.000 And he's like, it's just two million.

01:00:42.000 And there was like this pause in the room.

01:00:44.000 I go, what?

01:00:45.000 I go, two million? 1.00

01:00:48.000 What the fuck? 0.99

01:00:49.000 And we were laughing because we were basically at the time, especially the early days, we would fill this volcano bag up with pot vapor. 1.00

01:00:57.000 You know what a volcano is?

01:00:58.000 Do you know what a volcano is?

01:00:59.000 A volcano is this machine.

01:01:01.000 Jamie, show them a volcano.

01:01:02.000 A volcano is a machine for people who think joints are too mild.

01:01:06.000 And it's this preposterous machine that fills up this giant plastic bag with THC mist.

01:01:13.000 And then you pop it off the machine.

01:01:15.000 Oh, I've done that before.

01:01:16.000 Like the big plastic bag.

01:01:17.000 It's a gray plastic bag.

01:01:19.000 Yeah, yeah, I've done that.

01:01:19.000 That's it right there.

01:01:21.000 And then you suck all the fucking THC vapor out of that plastic bag. 1.00

01:01:27.000 We would just be obliterated. 1.00

01:01:29.000 I'd be in the middle of a conversation and forget exactly what I was talking about.

01:01:33.000 I had no idea what we were talking about.

01:01:35.000 That was my experience with that, too.

01:01:36.000 I got stunned out of my mind when I did that.

01:01:37.000 That was what we were doing.

01:01:39.000 And then, you know, started having conversations with different people.

01:01:41.000 Like, I had Graham Hancock on, and I was like, this is great.

01:01:44.000 Me and Duncan were talking to Graham Hancock.

01:01:46.000 I'm like, wow, this is amazing.

01:01:47.000 I can't believe I'm meeting him, and we're talking about ancient civilizations and all of his research.

01:01:53.000 And then, once it became more popular, people started seeking it out in terms of, like, I'd like to be a guest.

01:01:59.000 Like, okay.

01:02:00.000 You know, but it was totally organic.

01:02:03.000 Like, the whole thing happened organically.

01:02:05.000 Like, there's no way I would have ever said, I know one day.

01:02:08.000 This is going to be something that, like...

01:02:10.000 Fox News supports and CNN hates and the world talks about the nonsense ramblings of a comedian slash cage-fighting commentator. 0.98

01:02:21.000 Like, this is going to be a real fucking cog in the wheel. 0.99

01:02:25.000 Like, what? 0.98

01:02:26.000 No.

01:02:26.000 Never.

01:02:27.000 Not a fucking chance. 0.99

01:02:28.000 Never thought about it. 0.99

01:02:29.000 You never go further than when you don't know where you're going.

01:02:32.000 Sometimes.

01:02:33.000 But I do have this thing where I'd like to keep doing things and get better at them.

01:02:39.000 I get obsessed with stuff.

01:02:41.000 And in a sense, I've sort of applied a lot of that that I've done to other aspects of my life, whether it's martial arts or comedy, and I've sort of applied that to this thing.

01:02:51.000 In some weird way.

01:02:52.000 So it naturally fits within my personality because I've always been curious as to why I think the way I think, why I behave the way I behave, and what I can optimize, what I can make better about who I am and how I make my way through life.

01:03:06.000 And then when that gets applied to this, I sort of just sort of took the same pattern of thinking about the way I think about all kinds of things and applied it to conversations.

01:03:20.000 And applied it to like, why do people think the way they think?

01:03:22.000 Like you, what's it like for you in Ukraine?

01:03:25.000 I'm a genuinely curious person.

01:03:27.000 So when I have these conversations with people, I think that's one thing that does help the listener out, is that they really do understand that I'm not asking you this question because it's my job.

01:03:36.000 Like, we could quit right now.

01:03:38.000 We already did an hour.

01:03:39.000 We could just go home.

01:03:40.000 I'm curious.

01:03:41.000 I'd like to keep talking to you.

01:03:42.000 I enjoy it, genuinely.

01:03:44.000 And when I think...

01:03:47.000 When someone has a genuine enthusiasm for anything, whether it's making pottery, you know, whatever.

01:03:52.000 You watch a YouTube video about someone who makes hand-blown glass.

01:03:56.000 If someone's really into it, I'm fascinated.

01:03:58.000 I'm fascinated by people that are genuinely into things.

01:04:02.000 Well, I think that's what comes across, Joe.

01:04:04.000 I mean, you make it look easy, but it's, you know, I host a small podcast, and it's hard interviewing people.

01:04:08.000 And you make it look so seamless and perfect, and I think, but...

01:04:11.000 Well, I don't...

01:04:12.000 It is easy.

01:04:13.000 It's just my personality.

01:04:15.000 But I really think that it's just luck.

01:04:18.000 I think that's a giant part of it, is that my personality just was the right shape to fit into a whole in media.

01:04:28.000 It was just, oh, that fits.

01:04:30.000 Other than that, I was just the guy who asked annoying questions.

01:04:33.000 If you had me on a radio show, and there was some guy on a radio show, I was always like, why do you do this?

01:04:39.000 What is the thing that entices you to get up in the morning?

01:04:43.000 What's your motivation?

01:04:45.000 What did you want to do when you first started?

01:04:47.000 Those questions are because I want to know why I do what I do.

01:04:51.000 So I'm always interested when I see someone as exceptional or interesting or intelligent.

01:04:55.000 I always want to know, what's going on inside your head?

01:04:57.000 Is it similar to mine?

01:04:59.000 I'm trying to build a map of thinking of the world.

01:05:02.000 When I'm looking at my own life, I'm like, how different am I than this guy?

01:05:06.000 What does he do that maybe is significantly different or better that I can maybe apply to my own way of thinking?

01:05:17.000 I think that honesty comes across, Joe.

01:05:20.000 I think that's part of why your show is successful.

01:05:22.000 Oh, thank you. 0.98

01:05:23.000 I think a lot of it's dumb luck, too.

01:05:28.000 We don't want to admit it, but that's true. 0.84

01:05:29.000 Yeah, I could, man.

01:05:31.000 I could easily have been born in Sarajevo.

01:05:33.000 I could have easily been born in the Congo.

01:05:35.000 Who you are right now, there are so many factors that are outside of your control.

01:05:40.000 Just your genetics.

01:05:42.000 I came from a creative family.

01:05:45.000 My uncle that I told you converted to Judaism, he's an artist.

01:05:49.000 His brother is an artist.

01:05:51.000 You know, there's a lot of people in my family that are like these very outside-the-box thinking people.

01:06:00.000 My parents were hippies.

01:06:01.000 So there's a lot of that in my past that sort of helped me think about things as someone really not willing to subscribe to these patterns of behavior and thinking and just activities that everybody else thought were either Significant or mandatory.

01:06:21.000 I was just not interested in that for whatever reason.

01:06:25.000 I felt like there's other ways. 0.99

01:06:26.000 These people are miserable.

01:06:28.000 I remember thinking that when I was a kid, looking at people living their lives, doing things they didn't want to do constantly, and I'm like, there's got to be someone out there who's doing what they want to do.

01:06:37.000 Where are those folks?

01:06:38.000 How come I don't know any of them?

01:06:40.000 Then you see them in an interview or you read about them in a book.

01:06:44.000 Like, oh, okay, they exist.

01:06:45.000 You read a biography of someone who sort of navigated their way through the river of life and avoided the rocks and made their way to the waterfall.

01:06:53.000 Like, okay, so it's possible.

01:06:55.000 How do you do it?

01:06:56.000 Who's that guy?

01:06:57.000 How did he do it?

01:06:58.000 How many people told him no? 1.00

01:07:00.000 How many people told him to fuck off? 1.00

01:07:01.000 How many people told him he's a loser? 1.00

01:07:03.000 There has to be a lot.

01:07:05.000 You know, and the small percentage of people that do find a way to be happy and do something for a living that they really enjoy doing, to me that was exciting.

01:07:16.000 Like, okay, there are folks out there that are doing something that they really enjoy.

01:07:21.000 And the difference between that And I think there's a lot of value in doing something you don't like doing. 0.92

01:07:27.000 Because I had a lot of jobs that I fucking hated when I was a kid.

01:07:30.000 And I think those were really important to me. 0.92

01:07:32.000 I think doing construction.

01:07:35.000 I drove limos. 1.00

01:07:36.000 I did a lot of shit. 1.00

01:07:37.000 I delivered pizzas. 1.00

01:07:38.000 I did a lot of shit that I didn't enjoy doing. 0.99

01:07:40.000 And I think there's something in doing those things that builds up a muscle of... 0.99

01:07:51.000 Not just of discipline, but of like the ability to find a way to keep going when you don't want to do stuff.

01:07:59.000 And then you can apply that sort of – it's kind of a discipline thing, but it's just a grind, a grind mentality.

01:08:06.000 You can apply that to things you enjoy.

01:08:10.000 Yeah, no, I think that's important.

01:08:12.000 My parents forced me to, like, do rowing when I was in high school.

01:08:15.000 I was, like, a little pudgy kid who was very bookish.

01:08:17.000 My mother was a librarian.

01:08:18.000 I was definitely not the athlete type.

01:08:20.000 Rowing's the ultimate grind.

01:08:22.000 It is a total grind.

01:08:23.000 Because you're doing the same thing over and over again.

01:08:24.000 I know.

01:08:25.000 It's the ultimate grind. 0.92

01:08:25.000 And that just really beat the shit out of me. 0.92

01:08:27.000 And it was a pretty competitive team.

01:08:28.000 Like, we won state one year and stuff.

01:08:29.000 And it was just, like, hours a day, six days a week.

01:08:32.000 And it was just, like, that really made, like, a man, I guess, out of me.

01:08:40.000 Makes sense.

01:08:41.000 If you think about a person who would be like a champion rower or a champion cyclist.

01:08:47.000 Cyclist maybe even more so because you're doing it on your own.

01:08:50.000 Like you're doing the same thing everybody else is doing.

01:08:52.000 Left, right, left, right.

01:08:53.000 You're literally attached to a wheel, right?

01:08:56.000 So it's not like you can be creative in how you optimize the wheel or use your body in some sort of expressive way that's unique to your personality.

01:09:05.000 No.

01:09:06.000 Left, right, left, right.

01:09:07.000 It's just taking pain.

01:09:08.000 It's just the grind.

01:09:10.000 The ultimate grind.

01:09:11.000 And so people that do that, like, have you ever met Lance Armstrong?

01:09:14.000 No.

01:09:15.000 Fascinating character.

01:09:16.000 Interesting guy. 0.99

01:09:17.000 Because, like, I feel like Lance Armstrong would be fucking competitive at any goddamn thing he did. 0.98

01:09:23.000 Whether it's his pencils more sharp than yours or, you know what I'm saying? 0.98

01:09:26.000 Like, it's like that mindset to just go left, right, left, right, left, right, get across the line quicker than anybody.

01:09:32.000 When you apply it to days and days of riding like the Tour de France, that's a crazy mindset. 0.99

01:09:38.000 That dude could apply that shit to anything. 0.98

01:09:41.000 But in a lot of ways, I bet it probably trips you up, because it probably keeps you from being calm. 1.00

01:09:46.000 You're probably always looking to, like, fucking get on the bike and go, you know? 0.93

01:09:53.000 Have you had him on the show? 0.98

01:09:55.000 Yeah, yeah, I had him on the show.

01:09:56.000 I had him on the show after I had Jeff Nowitzki on the show, who's one of the guys that helped take him down.

01:10:01.000 Jeff Nowitzki also works for USADA. Different show, though, right?

01:10:04.000 Yeah, yeah, clearly.

01:10:06.000 Yeah, he hates Jeff Nowitzki. 0.99

01:10:07.000 Well, first of all, he's got a point in some ways, because the whole goddamn sport was dirty, but what they found in Lance was a poster boy for a dirty sport. 0.96

01:10:21.000 Like, if you took away all of his accomplishments, and you said, hey, you know, you won the Tour de France, but since, you know, you've admitted that you took performance-enhancing drugs, and by the way, they never caught him, you know that? 0.96

01:10:33.000 Yeah.

01:10:33.000 They never caught him.

01:10:34.000 So he made his way through this all but he had teammates that got caught and the teammates ratted him out and then he had lawsuits against the teammates and it was very messy business.

01:10:45.000 But if you took away him being first place and you say okay We're going to give first place to the next person who didn't test positive ever for performance enhancing drugs.

01:10:58.000 You've got to go to 18th place.

01:10:59.000 You're like a number 300. No, really, legitimately.

01:11:02.000 They're all dirty. 0.94

01:11:04.000 It's a dirty business. 0.99

01:11:05.000 It's like bodybuilding.

01:11:07.000 Like if you look at the Mr. Olympia guys, If they took away steroids, there's no one on that Mr. Olympia stage.

01:11:14.000 No one.

01:11:15.000 You gotta go way down the... 0.91

01:11:17.000 I mean, maybe there's some freak of nature that's like 32nd Place or something like that who just eats oats and fucking does squats, but most likely not. 0.87

01:11:26.000 If you want to be like that giant butterball turkey-looking ultra-vein muscle dude, you have to take steroids. 0.90

01:11:34.000 That's what they do. 0.99

01:11:35.000 So if you want to pretend that these guys are all taking fucking creatine and... 1.00

01:11:40.000 Some shit that you could buy in muscle and fitness. 1.00

01:11:42.000 Okay. 1.00

01:11:43.000 Go ahead.

01:11:43.000 Pretend.

01:11:44.000 Pretend whatever you want.

01:11:45.000 But that's not real.

01:11:46.000 So if you want to pretend that Lance Armstrong, he won toward DeFrance because he was cheating, go ahead and pretend.

01:11:51.000 Because that's not why.

01:11:52.000 He won because, like, Bill Burr has a great bit about it. 0.91

01:11:55.000 He's like, he was the best psycho. 1.00

01:11:56.000 They're all fucking psychos. 1.00

01:11:57.000 But he was our psycho. 1.00

01:11:58.000 He was the best out of all the psychos. 0.98

01:12:01.000 And they're all doing drugs.

01:12:02.000 But he was just...

01:12:03.000 With that said, he...

01:12:07.000 One, while they were all cheating.

01:12:10.000 Maybe he was better funded.

01:12:11.000 Maybe the people that he was involved with were more scientific about their application, but...

01:12:17.000 Random question.

01:12:18.000 Do you think Jeff Bezos is on steroids?

01:12:20.000 A hundred percent.

01:12:21.000 Oh, really?

01:12:21.000 I have no opinion.

01:12:22.000 I really don't know, but I'm just curious.

01:12:23.000 A thousand percent.

01:12:25.000 Really?

01:12:25.000 Yes.

01:12:25.000 I don't want to say steroids.

01:12:27.000 He is on hormone replacement therapy, in my opinion, because he gained a significant amount of muscle mass deep into his 40s.

01:12:35.000 If you look at him now, he looks great.

01:12:37.000 By the way, I take testosterone replacement, so I'm not demonizing it.

01:12:41.000 I don't think it's bad.

01:12:42.000 I think it's wise.

01:12:43.000 If you want your body to perform well, I think you should get regular blood work.

01:12:47.000 You should do it from a very good doctor that understands hormone replacement therapy.

01:12:51.000 You should be very smart about it.

01:12:52.000 You shouldn't take too much of it.

01:12:54.000 But if you want your body to perform well, it wards off diseases better.

01:12:58.000 It keeps your immune system healthier.

01:13:00.000 The more muscle you have and the stronger your body is, the healthier your body is.

01:13:05.000 I mean, to a point.

01:13:06.000 And to get to this bodybuilding range where you just look obscene. 0.56

01:13:09.000 But what he looks like now is a healthier, way better, way stronger version of what he looked like when he was younger.

01:13:16.000 He's totally ripped.

01:13:16.000 He looks way better.

01:13:17.000 He looks great.

01:13:18.000 The idea that that's bad is like, okay, well, what's good?

01:13:21.000 Is it good to get fat?

01:13:23.000 Well, no, you shouldn't say that because you're fat shaming.

01:13:25.000 Okay.

01:13:25.000 You can fat shame.

01:13:27.000 That's bad.

01:13:28.000 But if you muscle shame, that's okay. 0.98

01:13:30.000 The guy looks fucking great. 0.96

01:13:32.000 Yeah, he does. 0.95

01:13:32.000 Yeah. 0.95

01:13:33.000 He's doing something.

01:13:35.000 He's gone totally Miami.

01:13:35.000 The shirts, the women, the Instagram feed.

01:13:38.000 It's incredible.

01:13:38.000 See, people use that one image.

01:13:40.000 That was a disco party. 0.99

01:13:41.000 Do you know that?

01:13:42.000 With him with the glasses, the heart-shaped glasses with his bombshell girlfriend.

01:13:47.000 They had a disco-themed party for New Year's. 0.95

01:13:52.000 That's why he was wearing that silly shirt.

01:13:53.000 But I like that shirt. 0.71

01:13:54.000 I thought he looked pretty good at it, actually.

01:13:56.000 Well, you're Cuban.

01:13:58.000 Get a gold chain, bro. 1.00

01:14:00.000 Yeah, the Rolex, the fucking ridiculous car I can't afford, all that shit. 1.00

01:14:04.000 Yeah, he should wear it all the time. 1.00

01:14:05.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

01:14:06.000 Wear all that shit. 1.00

01:14:07.000 Wear tight shirts. 1.00

01:14:07.000 I think he looks great. 1.00

01:14:09.000 I love Jeff Bezos.

01:14:10.000 I mean, I don't...

01:14:11.000 I'm not a fan of some of the things that I hear about working at Amazon.

01:14:17.000 How much of those are true?

01:14:19.000 I don't know.

01:14:20.000 I haven't looked deeply into the anti-union practices.

01:14:24.000 I haven't looked deeply into the way they force workers to...

01:14:28.000 There was an article about workers that, while the tornado was coming to Kentucky...

01:14:33.000 Right, they couldn't... 0.98

01:14:34.000 Yeah, they weren't allowed to leave, which to me sounds like fucking insanity. 0.99

01:14:37.000 And they died. 1.00

01:14:39.000 That's fucking insanity. 0.99

01:14:40.000 If that's true, I don't know if that's true because there's narratives that get distributed after a horrific event that oftentimes aren't accurate because they sell good and it's good clickbait. 0.99

01:14:51.000 I don't know if that's true.

01:14:52.000 It's a hard company in terms of what I've heard about.

01:14:56.000 If you're one of those people working on the floor and someone orders a French press and you have 35 seconds to get that into a box or you have a strike.

01:15:06.000 And you're peeing in a little bottle because you don't want to take a pee break.

01:15:08.000 Right.

01:15:08.000 That sounds insane.

01:15:10.000 But, you know, I mean, if you're paid well and you understand that that's the job when you go into it and it's a really competitive environment, it's a good job in terms of, like, health care and how much compensation you get, I don't know.

01:15:26.000 I don't know.

01:15:26.000 So I can't comment on the business as a whole.

01:15:28.000 But when I look at billionaires and how I like billionaires to behave, there's two I really love. 0.95

01:15:33.000 I love Elon because he's fucking crazy and he lives in a $50,000 house and he has people driving around everywhere. 0.97

01:15:39.000 He doesn't own anything. 0.99

01:15:40.000 He doesn't own any houses and he's one of the richest men on earth.

01:15:42.000 And then Jeff Bezos who's balling out of control. 0.97

01:15:45.000 They have to take a fucking bridge apart because he wants to get his giant yacht through it. 0.98

01:15:49.000 He makes a yacht so big that they can't get it through a bridge. 0.99

01:15:53.000 The place where they're building his yacht, there's a bridge.

01:15:56.000 You have to get out that way to get to the ocean.

01:15:59.000 Where is this?

01:15:59.000 I think it's in the Netherlands.

01:16:01.000 Oh, right.

01:16:02.000 I heard about this.

01:16:03.000 The shipyards, yes.

01:16:04.000 So they have to dismantle a bridge to get his yacht.

01:16:07.000 I'm like...

01:16:08.000 The option to dismantle a bridge is not available for very many people.

01:16:13.000 I just think it's hilarious.

01:16:15.000 I think if there's a guy who's a super baller, out of control guy, who used to be a nerdy dude who drove a tiny Honda.

01:16:22.000 There's a video of him from 1999 where he's already worth a couple billion dollars.

01:16:26.000 And he's driving this Honda around.

01:16:28.000 And the interviewer asks him, you're worth billions of dollars.

01:16:31.000 Why are you driving this Honda?

01:16:32.000 He goes, this is a perfectly good car.

01:16:34.000 To go from that to being this...

01:16:37.000 You know, cliche.

01:16:38.000 I love cliche sometimes.

01:16:40.000 I enjoy them.

01:16:41.000 Speaking of Elon, there's a Ukraine connection.

01:16:43.000 I don't know if you know, he's shipping all these Starlink units.

01:16:45.000 Yes, I do know that.

01:16:47.000 And it's funny.

01:16:47.000 I have a Starlink unit from my house out in the sticks in northern Nevada.

01:16:51.000 And I took my Starlink with me to Ukraine thinking, like, you never know.

01:16:54.000 You might get stuck without internet if the Russians bomb this or that. 0.99

01:16:56.000 I ended up donating it to this fixer dude because his internet was weak.

01:17:01.000 But he's there.

01:17:02.000 It's a big deal.

01:17:03.000 Like, the Ukrainians are like, yes, super Elon, because... 1.00

01:17:05.000 They're bringing all these units.

01:17:08.000 Connection to the outside world is a major challenge in a war zone, obviously.

01:17:12.000 Well, the other part is that he's offered to fight Putin.

01:17:15.000 Would you mediate that?

01:17:17.000 Better.

01:17:18.000 I texted him.

01:17:19.000 I said, dude, I'll facilitate your training.

01:17:22.000 I'll set up your training.

01:17:23.000 I'll get you the best people.

01:17:25.000 Who would you bet on?

01:17:26.000 Without training, who would you bet on?

01:17:28.000 Would you bet on Putin or would you...

01:17:29.000 It's hard to say.

01:17:30.000 Elon is much bigger.

01:17:32.000 He's a big guy.

01:17:33.000 Have you ever met Elon?

01:17:34.000 I've never met him, no.

01:17:35.000 He's about 6'2".

01:17:36.000 He's wide.

01:17:37.000 He's a big person.

01:17:39.000 I don't know how much physical activity he's involved with, but I do know he enjoys martial arts.

01:17:44.000 He had a match with a sumo player at one point in time. 0.96

01:17:48.000 He's crazy. 0.96

01:17:48.000 He's a wild dude. 0.96

01:17:50.000 But he's so fucking smart that I feel like if you could get him training, he would pick things up very quickly. 0.99

01:17:58.000 He would probably have like a few moves that he would focus in on and dial them in very quickly and probably get very good. 0.98

01:18:06.000 I don't know.

01:18:07.000 We haven't had very many martial arts conversations.

01:18:10.000 So I don't know the full extent of how...

01:18:13.000 Because sometimes when people learn some things when they're a kid, those things...

01:18:19.000 We're good to go.

01:18:37.000 He's younger.

01:18:38.000 He's much bigger.

01:18:39.000 Putin's smaller than me.

01:18:40.000 But he's not a bunch of judo, supposedly.

01:18:43.000 Oh, he's a black belt in judo.

01:18:44.000 Putin's a legitimate black belt in judo.

01:18:45.000 I've watched Putin train.

01:18:47.000 I've watched videos of him training.

01:18:49.000 And I can see the difference between someone who is maybe a casual person with a rudimentary understanding and a legitimate black belt. 0.95

01:18:57.000 He's an absolutely legitimate black belt.

01:19:00.000 He took away his black belt.

01:19:01.000 What is that?

01:19:02.000 No, they gave him an honorary Taekwondo black belt.

01:19:06.000 Oh, Taekwondo, yeah.

01:19:07.000 Yeah, it's not...

01:19:09.000 I don't believe he has... 0.86

01:19:10.000 That's kind of silly.

01:19:12.000 That's like Bill Cosby getting a PhD and calling himself Dr. Cosby because they gave him an honorary PhD. 0.84

01:19:18.000 Because he was doing that.

01:19:20.000 Speaking of canceled people.

01:19:21.000 Well, that's more than canceled.

01:19:23.000 That's more than canceled. 0.99

01:19:23.000 That's some real shit. 0.99

01:19:25.000 Yeah, I think I'd bet on Elon. 1.00

01:19:28.000 I really do.

01:19:29.000 Especially if you gave him time.

01:19:31.000 If you gave him time to train and do it correctly, and I would set him up with the best people.

01:19:37.000 Have you made that offer to him?

01:19:39.000 Yeah, we've had a conversation.

01:19:41.000 Yeah, I said I would set him up with all of his training.

01:19:44.000 He's like, how epic would that be? 0.99

01:19:46.000 I'm like, fuck yeah, it'd be epic. 1.00

01:19:47.000 Kicking Putin's ass for Ukraine. 1.00

01:19:48.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:19:49.000 I mean, the world is so nuts, that's not...

01:19:52.000 I mean, it doesn't seem likely, but neither did seem likely we'd be on the verge of World War III three months ago.

01:19:57.000 That's right.

01:19:58.000 Three months ago, we were worried about vaccines and whether or not you'd have to wear a mask on an airplane.

01:20:04.000 And now we're literally on the verge of a nuclear war.

01:20:08.000 And one of the things that Mike Baker was saying to me was that you're dealing with hypersonic weapons now that can change paths very quickly in the middle of the air.

01:20:16.000 It's not something like, oh, you see the missile being launched.

01:20:20.000 You see where it's headed.

01:20:21.000 It's headed to San Francisco.

01:20:22.000 It'll be there in 15 minutes or whatever it is.

01:20:24.000 It's not that anymore.

01:20:25.000 Now they're moving fast in the speed of sound, and they can take hard angles in the middle of the sky, and you can't predict where they're going.

01:20:33.000 And the Russians used one in Ukraine recently, a couple days ago.

01:20:35.000 Did they really?

01:20:36.000 Yeah.

01:20:37.000 Or sorry, they claimed.

01:20:38.000 They claimed they used a hypersonic?

01:20:40.000 Hypersonic.

01:20:40.000 Wow.

01:20:43.000 That's crazy.

01:20:45.000 That's terrifying.

01:20:46.000 That kind of thing is terrifying.

01:20:47.000 And then you apply a nuclear warhead to something like that, and it's really terrifying. 0.98

01:20:51.000 And the thing that he was saying is that we used to have this concept of mutually assured destruction, that we would know that the Russians are launching at us and we would have a certain amount of time to decide to counterattack and then the world would be fucked. 0.96

01:21:03.000 He's like, that's not the case anymore. 0.80

01:21:04.000 A missile would launch so quickly and would hit us before we had any option to retaliate.

01:21:10.000 And that's something that needs to be understood.

01:21:14.000 Russia launched hypersonic missiles due to a low stockpile, sources say.

01:21:19.000 The leading theory in Western assessments of the hypersonic missile attack is that Russia's number of precision guided munitions are dwindling fast.

01:21:27.000 Why would that be the case?

01:21:29.000 Well, the theory is that their actual internal production of it is very poor.

01:21:34.000 I mean, just recently, just today, the only tank manufacturer in Russia announced that it's stopping production because it can't source components.

01:21:40.000 So, hold on.

01:21:42.000 Go back up there.

01:21:42.000 It says they launched them because it's the only thing that they can get through with absolute certainty.

01:21:48.000 Oh, I see.

01:21:49.000 So, they're saying that all of their weapons, they're running out of all kinds of weapons.

01:21:53.000 So, they use the hypersonic missile because it's one of the things they know can land.

01:21:57.000 So, Russia said that it shot a KH-47M2, how do you say that, Kinzhal?

01:22:04.000 Kinzhal? 0.96

01:22:05.000 I don't know.

01:22:06.000 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles at a weapons depot in western Ukraine on Friday, though it remains unclear if it was actually the target.

01:22:14.000 Still, President Joe Biden confirmed Russia's use of the weapons on Monday, stating that Russia's military launched them.

01:22:21.000 Oh, so this is Biden saying that, because it's the only thing that they can get through with absolute certainty.

01:22:29.000 Who knows?

01:22:30.000 The fog of propaganda is thick.

01:22:33.000 Who knows?

01:22:34.000 But if he really did use that and they showed that it's not just a concept, that it's a real thing that they have and they have access to and they can arm with a nuclear warhead.

01:22:43.000 My fear is that they launch one nuclear warhead and say, go, okay, now what?

01:22:48.000 Right.

01:22:49.000 Because that would be the move.

01:22:51.000 The move would not be launch nuclear warheads at China or rather at the United States.

01:22:57.000 And China does the same thing. 0.99

01:22:59.000 We just fucking get blown to smithereens. 1.00

01:23:01.000 The move would be one nuclear warhead. 1.00

01:23:03.000 And go, now what are you going to do?

01:23:06.000 And everybody would go, hey, [...

01:23:10.000 You know, if you're in a gang war and one person gets shot, you might be able to have a ceasefire.

01:23:14.000 Like, this was the discussion that Malcolm Gladwell was having in Outliers about these Appalachian cultures where they were just constantly, you know, the Hatfields and the McCoys, these people that were constantly feuding and killing each other.

01:23:26.000 Like, there were certain times where they had tried to come to the negotiating table, and at a certain point, too much blood had been spilled.

01:23:34.000 That's the worry.

01:23:35.000 You know, my worry is they launch one nuke.

01:23:41.000 Yeah, I mean, yeah.

01:23:42.000 That would be a real challenge to the West, right?

01:23:44.000 I mean, that's kind of what we did in World War II, right?

01:23:47.000 That's right.

01:23:48.000 Yeah, although what people forget there is that the firebombing campaign of Japanese cities was...

01:23:54.000 Causes more death, actually, than the...

01:23:56.000 Although, obviously, nuclear weapons are, from a symbolic perspective, huge.

01:23:58.000 But they were basically incinerating Japanese city after Japanese city. 0.96

01:24:02.000 Yeah.

01:24:02.000 Even outside of the nuclear weapon thing.

01:24:04.000 Yeah.

01:24:05.000 But, again, that was total war.

01:24:07.000 That's when civilizations were going to war with each other and, yeah, destroying them in some sense.

01:24:13.000 It's wild that humans still participate in that.

01:24:17.000 And you've got to wonder, like, how much of that...

01:24:22.000 If we all spoke the exact same language how much of that would be different?

01:24:30.000 It would be very difficult.

01:24:31.000 It's more difficult to demonize people who speak exactly like you do, use the exact same language, have the exact same values.

01:24:41.000 I mean, that was the point behind Esperanto, this invented language that got a little bit of traction.

01:24:46.000 The thought was if everyone spoke the same language, it would lead to world peace because there would be better understanding.

01:24:50.000 Yeah.

01:24:51.000 Is that, you know, that's the Tower of Babel, right? 0.92

01:24:53.000 I think we'd find even more ways to kill each other. 0.84

01:24:56.000 You think so? 0.99

01:24:56.000 Yes. 0.99

01:24:57.000 Yeah.

01:24:57.000 I'm not such an optimist.

01:24:58.000 Well, I mean, look at what's going on in America between the left and the right.

01:25:02.000 I mean, there's some times in the struggle in America, like when Trump was president, that was really concerned that we could conceivably get to a point where people would justify a war against the opposite party.

01:25:16.000 Yeah.

01:25:17.000 Did you ever feel like that?

01:25:19.000 There's a lot of Civil War talk.

01:25:20.000 And it was weird that a lot of people on the Red State side would almost be looking forward to it because, oh, we've got all the guns and we're the tough guys.

01:25:27.000 I'm like, societies that have actually gone through real civil wars, like Spain or Yugoslavia, nobody comes out.

01:25:34.000 That's not a good idea.

01:25:35.000 It's a crazy idea.

01:25:36.000 It's a crazy idea.

01:25:37.000 That said, I do wonder...

01:25:40.000 When I get in, like, Silicon Valley bold prediction mode, like, I think the nation state as we know it, which is a relatively recent invention, by the way, like, what we call a nation state is a definite post-enlightenment, post-printing press sort of thing, is, you know, I'm not so bullish on it.

01:25:54.000 I don't know if we can, not just the U.S., but just broadly, the notion of a nation state.

01:25:57.000 I think the Internet demolishes a lot of consensus.

01:26:00.000 And the amount of consensus necessary to keep, you know, a nation state in a country of 330 million spanning four time zones is very, very difficult.

01:26:07.000 The problem with the alternative is that people are terrified of this concept of a one world government.

01:26:15.000 Yeah.

01:26:15.000 Rightly so.

01:26:17.000 I mean, if you look at the way China is able to control its population with social credit scores and just overwhelming surveillance and totalitarian government, we're terrified that that could be applied globally.

01:26:32.000 Yeah.

01:26:33.000 It seems like it could be, especially if you have digital currency that is centralized.

01:26:38.000 It's like if the government has the ability to veto purchases or decide that your social credit doesn't allow you to do certain things because you've done the wrong thing or you said the wrong thing.

01:26:50.000 Yeah, I mean, those are some of the objections to the sanctions being levied on Russia, right?

01:26:53.000 The West can just, like, turn you off.

01:26:55.000 Right.

01:26:55.000 Like, what does that mean?

01:26:56.000 That's actually dangerous.

01:26:57.000 Right.

01:26:57.000 I mean, like, and the Russian people, are they really responsible for what Putin's doing?

01:27:02.000 It seems like they're under the control of a dictator.

01:27:04.000 What if they don't have access to medicine?

01:27:08.000 You know, what if they don't have access to goods and services and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with them?

01:27:15.000 Yeah.

01:27:17.000 I mean, looking at it from the Ukrainian perspective, though, they didn't have a choice.

01:27:21.000 I mean, they provoked – there's an unprovoked total war that they've declared, like a real total war that they've declared on the Ukraine. 0.58

01:27:26.000 And so, in some sense, why shouldn't the sanctions be totalizing?

01:27:30.000 Yeah.

01:27:31.000 Well, it's interesting, too, the attack on the oligarchs or the sanctioning the oligarchs.

01:27:36.000 That's interesting to me because that's really the first time – In our lifetime that we've ever seen some of the richest men in the world terrified to lose everything.

01:27:45.000 Right.

01:27:45.000 We're getting their yachts seized in ports around the world.

01:27:47.000 Getting their jets seized, real estate seized.

01:27:50.000 Fling to Dubai, fling to Israel. 0.71

01:27:51.000 Yeah.

01:27:51.000 And like, where are they going to go?

01:27:53.000 And how much access to their money will they have?

01:27:59.000 You know, is it all going away?

01:28:00.000 Can you take it all away?

01:28:01.000 Like, where is it?

01:28:02.000 Who has it?

01:28:04.000 Where is it at?

01:28:05.000 Do they just log into their Schwab account?

01:28:07.000 That level of life is so beyond my understanding that I don't even understand what that would even look like.

01:28:11.000 Right.

01:28:12.000 And what investments are safe when you're an oligarch fleeing for Turkey or somewhere, wherever you're going, to UAE, wherever you're going?

01:28:23.000 What do you do?

01:28:24.000 There's a Bromovitz yacht that is outside of Turkey right now that just recently changed its status to waiting for instructions.

01:28:32.000 So it's like kind of moving around and everybody knows where it is.

01:28:38.000 So you know where this guy is.

01:28:40.000 So what happens?

01:28:44.000 Eventually, does someone come in?

01:28:46.000 Does the Coast Guard come in and take his boat?

01:28:49.000 Who's going to take that thing?

01:28:51.000 Is that what they're going to do?

01:28:52.000 And then what does he do?

01:28:52.000 Well, if it goes into port, it will.

01:28:53.000 It's within 12 miles.

01:28:54.000 Right.

01:28:55.000 Any port?

01:28:56.000 Well, no.

01:28:57.000 I mean, the country would have to want to seize it.

01:28:58.000 So what if he goes to Dubai?

01:29:00.000 Right.

01:29:01.000 Or what if he just never docks?

01:29:02.000 Right.

01:29:03.000 If he just stays in international waters.

01:29:05.000 Right.

01:29:06.000 And he can just get resupplied from boats that come out to him.

01:29:08.000 Can they get gas to a boat?

01:29:10.000 Oh, yeah.

01:29:10.000 Sure.

01:29:10.000 That's how they do it?

01:29:11.000 It's expensive, but he could do it.

01:29:12.000 Yeah.

01:29:12.000 Well, he's got a lot of money, I hear.

01:29:13.000 I mean, the head of this organization called Sea Shepherd.

01:29:15.000 I don't know if you're familiar with him.

01:29:16.000 Yes.

01:29:16.000 Right, right.

01:29:17.000 You should have that guy on here.

01:29:18.000 But he used to live at sea because he claimed that he would get extradited because he's considered a pirate in some countries.

01:29:24.000 Whoa.

01:29:25.000 And so he would be 12 miles off at sea all the time.

01:29:28.000 Well, they're always catching people whaling.

01:29:30.000 Right.

01:29:30.000 Exactly.

01:29:31.000 Yeah, it's...

01:29:33.000 I used to support them.

01:29:33.000 I used to buy their t-shirts.

01:29:34.000 They have cool t-shirts.

01:29:35.000 Yeah, I have a jacket.

01:29:36.000 I have a hoodie.

01:29:36.000 Yeah, they look super cool, right?

01:29:37.000 Yeah, it's cool.

01:29:38.000 With the trident and the thing.

01:29:42.000 So do you think that that's going to be effective to sanction the oligarchs?

01:29:46.000 And do you think they actually have any legitimate leverage over Putin?

01:29:52.000 Well, for Putin, it seems like it, right?

01:29:54.000 They've frozen the central bank's reserves overseas, as I understand it.

01:29:57.000 And so their ability to...

01:29:58.000 Part of the reason why that tank, you know, factory has to shut down is that they can't buy parts, right?

01:30:02.000 Like, how do you...

01:30:03.000 Right?

01:30:04.000 The ruble isn't necessarily worth much.

01:30:05.000 How do you actually go out and buy parts from the West, which they need as inputs?

01:30:09.000 I mean, they're an extraction economy.

01:30:10.000 They sell raw materials.

01:30:11.000 They don't manufacture that much from...

01:30:13.000 And so it seems like those...

01:30:16.000 I mean, it seems like this is really a war between which can last longer, Ukrainian nationalism or the Russian economy, right?

01:30:21.000 Right.

01:30:21.000 It's basically the war that's going on.

01:30:24.000 How do you think it plays out?

01:30:28.000 If I were a betting man, I think the most likely outcome is some form of stalemate.

01:30:33.000 I don't think the Russians can take Ukraine. 0.98

01:30:35.000 I just don't think it's possible.

01:30:36.000 They have it encircled.

01:30:38.000 They can't encircle Kyiv.

01:30:39.000 They'll take more cities in the east, potentially.

01:30:42.000 Ukrainians will suffer. 1.00

01:30:43.000 There'll be tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

01:30:44.000 It'll be a horror show.

01:30:46.000 And they'll have to come to some sort of deal.

01:30:50.000 The Ukrainians don't have to promise, oh, we're not going to join, pinky swear, we're not going to join NATO for the next 10 years.

01:30:55.000 Zelensky stays in office.

01:30:56.000 They're not going to demilitarize because one of the original requests is the Russians saying you have to get rid of your military.

01:31:00.000 And then the local in-house Russian media will spin it as a Putin victory.

01:31:04.000 And that'll be that.

01:31:06.000 That's what you think?

01:31:07.000 That's probably the most likely outcome.

01:31:08.000 Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think that he was going to invade Ukraine?

01:31:11.000 I don't even know that region of the world very well.

01:31:14.000 I wouldn't even have conjured the thought, oh yeah, Russia's going to invade.

01:31:17.000 No.

01:31:19.000 It's interesting how many people switch from being vaccine experts to being foreign policy experts.

01:31:25.000 See, that's something I never do. 0.99

01:31:26.000 Shit I don't know about, I don't post about. 0.99

01:31:27.000 I don't COVID post. 0.98

01:31:29.000 I find the meta-conversation about these things interesting, but the thing itself, an opinion about COVID, you will never get out of it.

01:31:35.000 But it's just fascinating how these people pivoted from one cause to another and then completely ignored the other cause.

01:31:43.000 It's gone.

01:31:44.000 It's gone now.

01:31:45.000 I mean, I think that's a legit criticism.

01:31:46.000 Again, I don't think it invalidates the Ukrainian cause, but it's true that there's a certain type of person who, like, just switches their little thing that they're obsessed about.

01:31:53.000 No, that's what I'm fascinated by.

01:31:54.000 I mean, it definitely doesn't invalidate the Ukrainian cause.

01:31:57.000 That's one of the most significant causes of our lifetime.

01:32:00.000 I'm glad we agree.

01:32:01.000 You think that?

01:32:01.000 Okay, interesting.

01:32:02.000 Oh, yeah.

01:32:02.000 I mean, it's...

01:32:03.000 It's terrifying to me.

01:32:05.000 I think about it all the time.

01:32:06.000 I thought about it last night before bed and I had to meditate to get it out of my head.

01:32:11.000 There's nothing I can do about this right now.

01:32:13.000 I'm about to go to bed and I'm thinking about what does it look like if we legitimately have World War III? Am I prepared?

01:32:23.000 Will my family be safe?

01:32:25.000 What do we do?

01:32:27.000 Those thoughts, for whatever reason, at night time, those are when I have to fight those off the most.

01:32:32.000 I have the same problem. 0.99

01:32:33.000 The most stressful shit, right when I'm going to bed, it's like, why the fuck am I thinking about this now? 0.99

01:32:38.000 It's weird because I think there's something about when you know you're going to be your most vulnerable, because you're literally unconscious, that during that time is when you start assessing all the possible risks. 0.99

01:32:50.000 You know, that's when you check the locks on the door.

01:32:52.000 You always think that someone's gonna come into the house while you're asleep.

01:32:55.000 You don't think someone's gonna come in the house while you're awake.

01:32:57.000 Right.

01:32:57.000 And it's sunny out.

01:32:59.000 You know?

01:33:00.000 It's like...

01:33:02.000 Like, when people smoke marijuana, during the daytime, most of the time, even if you're paranoid, it's not that bad.

01:33:08.000 But if you're paranoid at night, there's something about at night. 0.98

01:33:12.000 Being high at night is fucking scary. 0.84

01:33:15.000 Because the paranoia is accentuated by the natural paranoia that you have from the fact that it's dark out. 0.99

01:33:22.000 There's a thing that human beings have about the dark that I think is related to being, in our past, being preyed upon by big cats.

01:33:32.000 We're worried about things we can't see.

01:33:34.000 We're worried about losing one of our senses. 0.99

01:33:37.000 Even in my own fucking yard, if I let my dogs out at night and I'm out there with them, I'm looking around. 0.99

01:33:43.000 You never know. 0.99

01:33:44.000 You never know what's out there. 1.00

01:33:47.000 Could be some fucking predator that made its way through my fence and it's in my yard. 1.00

01:33:52.000 Yeah, it's scary. 0.99

01:33:55.000 After this book, this Chaos Monkeys thing that caused so much trouble for me at Apple, because I'm a very ambiguous media person.

01:34:03.000 I often joke that I'm not really a narcissist.

01:34:05.000 I just play one on the internet.

01:34:06.000 So I'm forced to do all these shows and highlight my life even though at some level I'm a recluse.

01:34:11.000 So I bought five acres of these islands off the northwest of Seattle called the San Juan Islands, these gorgeous islands.

01:34:16.000 If you've ever been to them, you should definitely go.

01:34:17.000 I've heard of it.

01:34:18.000 Oh, in the summer, it's paradise on earth. 0.99

01:34:20.000 So one of the islands, Orcas Island, like I bought a few acres of land, not that many, just random land, nothing beautiful or gorgeous or anything, and like started homesteading it, like chopping down trees, laying it out, putting up a teepee, a yurt, solar system, all that fucking MacGyver shit. 0.82

01:34:34.000 And I did that for off and on a couple years after...

01:34:37.000 I remember when I first got there, the book thing came out, it was a bestseller for a month.

01:34:41.000 It was a big deal, a lot of media for a month or two.

01:34:43.000 I'm disgusted by it after a month or two.

01:34:45.000 And so I literally showed up at this place.

01:34:47.000 The first advance check, I bought this land.

01:34:49.000 So I show up with a backpack and I'm like, I guess this is me now. 0.97

01:34:52.000 I just showed up with a tent and I'm in the fucking woods and this is it now.

01:34:56.000 And I remember those first couple nights, like, you start a fire and the whole thing, and, like, the fringes of, like, what you can see on the fire and the light, it's like, I don't know. 0.97

01:35:01.000 Like, I had a gun with me.

01:35:02.000 And, like, this island is not dangerous.

01:35:04.000 Like, there's really not much to fear.

01:35:06.000 But you're, yeah, you're there in the sticks, and it's like, you're alone.

01:35:09.000 Were you worried someone was going to target you?

01:35:12.000 What do you mean, target me?

01:35:13.000 Because of the book.

01:35:13.000 Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:35:14.000 Not really, no.

01:35:15.000 So you had the gun just... 0.99

01:35:17.000 Dude, because you're fucking in the middle of the woods. 0.98

01:35:19.000 And there's, like, the cell phone doesn't work. 0.99

01:35:21.000 There's no contact in the outside world.

01:35:22.000 You just don't know.

01:35:23.000 Just in case a pirate shows up on your island.

01:35:25.000 There's a small meth problem.

01:35:27.000 There's a little bit of that on the island.

01:35:30.000 It's not quite paradise.

01:35:31.000 Meth heads in a bass boat.

01:35:33.000 Come to visit you.

01:35:35.000 Tell everybody about your book.

01:35:38.000 What was the premise of your book?

01:35:40.000 I should have brought a copy of it.

01:35:41.000 I didn't think of it.

01:35:43.000 It's available where all fine books are sold.

01:35:45.000 The book was called Chaos Monkeys, which I can explain the title if you want me to explain it.

01:35:50.000 Basically, long story short, PhD student, drop out of the PhD, go to work at Wall Street.

01:35:56.000 Wall Street blows up.

01:35:57.000 I come back to tech, right?

01:35:58.000 Or back to tech.

01:35:59.000 I'd never worked in tech, but I'd gone to school in Berkeley and I'd seen kind of the first tech bubble, so I was kind of vaguely aware of it.

01:36:04.000 Join tech.

01:36:05.000 Join ad tech.

01:36:06.000 Do my own startup.

01:36:08.000 Tiny little company, not a big success.

01:36:10.000 Gets sold to Twitter.

01:36:11.000 I end up at Facebook a year before the IPO as one of the early members of the ads team.

01:36:15.000 So if you go like browse for shit on the internet and you see that same pair of shoes inside your Instagram feed or whatever, I created the very first versions, initial, not what's there now, versions of that.

01:36:25.000 So a lot of the... 0.87

01:36:26.000 I was the first like product manager for ads targeting.

01:36:28.000 So like how user data gets turned into a successful ads campaign is what I was responsible for in a very formative period in the company's history.

01:36:36.000 And so...

01:36:38.000 I was there, again, not that terribly long, but a lot happened.

01:36:41.000 The company grew in size enormously and figured out how to make money. 0.99

01:36:45.000 I didn't know how to fucking make money. 0.98

01:36:46.000 The ads, as everyone remembers, used to suck, and now everyone's like, ads are either creepy or crappy. 0.99

01:36:50.000 There's no in between. 0.89

01:36:51.000 So I went from crappy to creepy.

01:36:54.000 It was a big team.

01:36:54.000 A lot of people did stuff to make that happen.

01:36:56.000 So the book is about that.

01:36:57.000 Like, how do you start a company?

01:36:58.000 How do you raise money?

01:36:59.000 The inner workings of Silicon Valley.

01:37:00.000 I went through this famous incubator thing called Y Combinator.

01:37:03.000 When you say crappy to creepy, do you mean invasive?

01:37:06.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:37:06.000 In the sense of like, oh, this is like totally irrelevant to like, oh, I was literally just searching for this thing and here's an ad for it.

01:37:12.000 Let me ask you about this because we've talked about this multiple times on the podcast.

01:37:16.000 Sometimes you're having a conversation about something.

01:37:18.000 Oh, God, the microphone thing.

01:37:19.000 Is that real?

01:37:19.000 No.

01:37:20.000 It's not real.

01:37:21.000 No, no.

01:37:22.000 I mean...

01:37:23.000 I don't believe him.

01:37:24.000 Do you believe him?

01:37:24.000 We were just talking about something the other day.

01:37:26.000 I haven't searched for it at all.

01:37:27.000 Okay.

01:37:28.000 And I got an ad for it.

01:37:29.000 Something me and you were talking about.

01:37:31.000 What was it?

01:37:31.000 If I remember right, I couldn't remember.

01:37:33.000 But it was something we were talking about after the show.

01:37:36.000 Six hours later, I'm getting an ad for it.

01:37:38.000 Here's what I'd bet on.

01:37:38.000 One of you two either searched or went to some website.

01:37:41.000 Not only that.

01:37:41.000 One of us.

01:37:42.000 So if I do, he gets an ad?

01:37:44.000 Yeah, potentially.

01:37:45.000 Yeah.

01:37:46.000 How?

01:37:47.000 The term of art is called lookalike audiences.

01:37:49.000 What that means is, so some retailer knows that you dump a bunch of money at whatever.

01:37:55.000 REI, Cabela's, pick your favorite retailer, whatever.

01:37:57.000 Yeah.

01:37:57.000 You two are buds and you interact a lot on whatever social media platform.

01:38:01.000 If I'm Cabela, say, just a cited example, I'm like, okay, I know this guy is worth, whatever, $2,000 a year.

01:38:06.000 Get me more people like him.

01:38:08.000 And companies like Facebook or other companies can say, aha, well, guess what?

01:38:11.000 He talks to this dude a lot, who, by the way, whose profile kind of looks like yours.

01:38:14.000 And so you will get targeted for something that you did.

01:38:16.000 Yeah.

01:38:17.000 I get that.

01:38:18.000 But we have very different online things.

01:38:20.000 You know, I look at sneakers and stuff.

01:38:22.000 He's looking at hunting and whatnot.

01:38:23.000 The thing that came up, I wish I could...

01:38:25.000 I normally take a screenshot when these things happen because I'll share it with the person.

01:38:28.000 Yeah.

01:38:28.000 Like, look what just popped up on my phone.

01:38:31.000 This was outside of that.

01:38:32.000 Yeah.

01:38:33.000 This was one of those things I go, all right, we need to talk about this.

01:38:36.000 But, again, I know there's defenses to it, but this was...

01:38:41.000 Let me address the question.

01:38:42.000 It's funny.

01:38:42.000 There was a Planet Money show about this in which they talked to various people who had this experience to try to figure out how it actually happened.

01:38:47.000 I was a guest on it, but let me address the problem.

01:38:52.000 Let's say Marcus Zuckerberg is listening to your conversations and gets a live stream of your phone all the time.

01:39:00.000 What fraction of the time do you think you're actually mentioning something commercially interesting that would be worth, like, targeting against?

01:39:05.000 Like, how often do you say, hey, I'm flying to Boston next week, and I need a flight and a hotel on a taxi?

01:39:10.000 And you say it in some structured way.

01:39:11.000 That would be easy.

01:39:13.000 It's pretty rare, right?

01:39:14.000 And the amount of—I mean, think about it.

01:39:16.000 The amount of data—you'd be on a constant phone call, basically, to Zuck.

01:39:19.000 It would eat up your network like crazy.

01:39:20.000 And then the fraction of the time versus you just like going to fucking kayak and like entering Boston and using that data.

01:39:26.000 And so I'm not saying it's technically impossible.

01:39:29.000 And in some future world, who knows?

01:39:31.000 But it would be difficult.

01:39:32.000 And even if you manage to do it, there isn't...

01:39:35.000 One of the things...

01:39:36.000 One of the chapters in my book, I understand you're listening to have a chapter called The Narcissism of Privacy, which comes off maybe more snarky than I mean.

01:39:43.000 But...

01:39:43.000 Privacy is a right, and people have a right to it, obviously.

01:39:46.000 But I think one of the sort of misleading things when you think about companies like Facebook is that Facebook wants to know the thing that you least want them to know, which is your personal conversation with your loved one or whatever.

01:39:56.000 When it comes to commercial data that actually helps target ads, there's very little of what you do.

01:40:00.000 Or things that you wouldn't think of are what they want, not necessarily what you would not want Facebook to know.

01:40:07.000 Right, but what concerns people is the idea that your microphone is picking up keywords that they have accounts with.

01:40:16.000 So whether it's cell phones, tires, whatever it is, then you see an ad for it.

01:40:22.000 It would be more possible in like the smart speaker systems you have at home, for example.

01:40:26.000 Right.

01:40:26.000 That probably wouldn't be so hard to do.

01:40:29.000 That probably wouldn't be so hard to do.

01:40:30.000 That makes sense.

01:40:31.000 And so how would they target you for an ad with that?

01:40:34.000 Well, again, if you said something well-structured, that would be easy to tease out.

01:40:38.000 And if that's connected to the same account that's connected to your Gmail or your Google search.

01:40:43.000 Or Amazon.

01:40:44.000 Or Amazon, then they would show you the ads.

01:40:46.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:40:46.000 So, like, a lot of what happens that's actual targeting is, like, data joining.

01:40:50.000 So, like, getting back to the Cabela's example, like, I understand you're into hunting, so maybe you shop at the local Cabela's or Bass Pro Shop. 0.87

01:40:56.000 They'll have your phone number and email for all the shit you buy online. 0.96

01:40:59.000 And what they want to do is find you online and sell you because it's the fucking deer hunting season sale or whatever. 0.99

01:41:05.000 And so what they'll do is they'll upload that list of emails to Facebook and say, oh, this is the deer hunting group. 0.94

01:41:10.000 And then they'll show you ads based on your actual buying history.

01:41:13.000 So that sort of thing absolutely does happen.

01:41:14.000 That makes sense.

01:41:15.000 Yeah, that absolutely happens.

01:41:16.000 That completely makes sense.

01:41:17.000 So that's the creepy.

01:41:19.000 That's the creepy, yeah.

01:41:20.000 It went from crappy to creepy.

01:41:22.000 That's creepy.

01:41:23.000 And it pays for the internet.

01:41:24.000 If there's any saving grace to this, it pays for the services that most people wouldn't be willing to pay for otherwise or wouldn't exist otherwise, for better or worse.

01:41:31.000 Interesting is that it became one of the most valuable commodities in the world and people just sort of gave up access to it because they didn't understand it was valuable.

01:41:39.000 When it first started being implemented, when people first started using Gmail or they first started searching for things on Google or using Facebook, they never thought they were giving up access to something that's insanely valuable that would create...

01:41:52.000 Not just some of the biggest companies in the world like Facebook and Apple and Google, but also some of the most influential companies that have ever existed.

01:42:00.000 That's right.

01:42:00.000 There's never been a company that has the kind of input on social policies or on the way the world functions like Facebook.

01:42:10.000 Has there ever been a single individual company that has the kind of To put on my Facebook handle a little bit, I mean, if you go back to the world of Walter Cronkite and like three TV networks and creating consensus around things like Vietnam or other events, I think there's precedence.

01:42:24.000 It may not have been within one software company in the sort of way that you were talking about, but was there a media establishment that manufactured consent around certain social issues?

01:42:32.000 I would say yes.

01:42:33.000 Yeah, that's true.

01:42:34.000 But I think the difference is that they were in some way, shape, or form connected to the government.

01:42:41.000 And we don't think that Facebook is.

01:42:44.000 But maybe they are.

01:42:46.000 Well, they respond to, like, warrants and stuff when it comes to policing online behavior.

01:42:50.000 And I get into that a little bit in the book.

01:42:52.000 They definitely...

01:42:53.000 You know, they do a lot of good protecting, like, child molesters and stuff and taking them off of Facebook.

01:42:58.000 And also, I think people have to understand the sheer volume of stuff that goes onto their network every day, right?

01:43:04.000 So it's managing at scale.

01:43:06.000 Exactly, John.

01:43:08.000 You're obviously a very bright guy who's been very thoughtful about this.

01:43:11.000 But one of the things that's hardest to convey to people who are on the outside looking in...

01:43:15.000 You open any dashboard at a company like that, and every number is in the billions.

01:43:18.000 Billions of posts, billions of people, billions of photos.

01:43:22.000 Even if they were trying to be like best effort, it would be very difficult to police a lot of what people want them to police.

01:43:27.000 We looked up the data on YouTube about the amount of data, amount of videos that get uploaded to YouTube daily.

01:43:35.000 And it's astounding.

01:43:37.000 I forget what the number is.

01:43:40.000 See what it is.

01:43:41.000 Find out what it is daily.

01:43:42.000 But it's one of those things where you go, okay, how would you manage that?

01:43:45.000 How many people would you have to hire to watch that?

01:43:47.000 How many people would you have to hire to watch every video that's being uploaded on YouTube every day?

01:43:54.000 You would have to have millions and millions of employees whose sole job is to watch nonsense.

01:44:01.000 Yeah.

01:44:02.000 How you do it, you try scaling it with software.

01:44:04.000 So one of the things I did at Facebook, and I get into it in the book a little bit, I was briefly the product manager for the team that policed ads.

01:44:10.000 So it's a smaller problem than the big problem you're talking about.

01:44:12.000 But, you know, people who run ads, there's also like an ads creative policy.

01:44:15.000 Like you can't run ads with like naked women and stuff in it, right? 0.97

01:44:17.000 Right.

01:44:24.000 To do the things that only humans can do well, and then you scale their efforts with software.

01:44:28.000 So if the guy tries to upload the exact same ad twice or the exact same video twice, even if he changes the contour slightly or he changes the shading, so it's not literally the same file, you have smart software that actually picks it out and prevents them from doing it.

01:44:39.000 That's how they do it.

01:44:40.000 Even Facebook and Google can't afford to hire millions of people to review these ads or the videos.

01:44:45.000 But the problem is when you do have humans that do it and then it's subjective.

01:44:52.000 My friend Kyle Kalinske got banned from Twitter today.

01:44:56.000 I don't know if you know who he is, but he has a great progressive political talk show, The Kyle Kalinske Show, and he also has another podcast he does with Crystal Ball.

01:45:08.000 Really bright guy, very well-read, open-minded, the whole deal.

01:45:13.000 This is all he writes.

01:45:14.000 He writes, 2015 was seven years ago.

01:45:18.000 And then he has a GIF of a guy's head exploding.

01:45:22.000 He's just realizing, my God, time has flown.

01:45:26.000 He got banned for that?

01:45:26.000 He got locked out of Twitter.

01:45:29.000 And they're saying that it's...

01:45:31.000 You know that image of a fake head blowing up?

01:45:36.000 I think it's from Scanners, the movie Scanners. 0.99

01:45:39.000 It's so silly. 0.97

01:45:40.000 It looks fake. 0.99

01:45:40.000 It's like a guy's head and... 0.99

01:45:41.000 And then like his brain.

01:45:43.000 Yeah, just the whole head explodes.

01:45:44.000 They said that depicted images of torture or murder or something, you know, extreme gore.

01:45:51.000 Right.

01:45:52.000 Like what? 0.99

01:45:53.000 That fucking standard head exploding gif that everybody's been using from the beginning of time, that's enough to get you blocked from fucking Twitter now? 0.97

01:46:04.000 My view has always been that Facebook and all these companies should not be in the business of actually judging truth for people and that, in my opinion, they're over-policing. 0.97

01:46:11.000 And I've written a lot about this after the election in 2016. It eventually burned me out so much I went back to tech because it just drove me crazy.

01:46:17.000 But I just don't think...

01:46:18.000 There's hate speech standards in the United States, which are pretty narrow relative to other countries' free speech norms.

01:46:25.000 And some people might not like that, but that's the nature of the First Amendment in this country.

01:46:29.000 And I think it's a well-defined standard that has done us very well for decades.

01:46:32.000 And I don't see why...

01:46:34.000 Obviously, legally, the First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies, but at least morally or spiritually, I think it should apply.

01:46:39.000 And that should be the standard, in my opinion.

01:46:41.000 I couldn't agree more.

01:46:41.000 But one of the things that drives me crazy about the left is that so many people on the left seem to want them to take a stand of being the moral police.

01:46:50.000 And they say, well, you know, you are allowing these extremist groups to thrive, and they're recruiting people, and this or that.

01:46:59.000 And so they use it as a justification.

01:47:00.000 But the problem is, once you do justify banning people because of an ideology that you don't agree with, it's going to move further and further down the line to the point where things that you do agree with and you think should be fine are now worthy of getting banned for.

01:47:15.000 And that is happening right now.

01:47:17.000 We're seeing that happen.

01:47:18.000 Yeah, I think people have forgotten that you have to design laws and systems such that imagine your worst enemy were implementing it.

01:47:24.000 Right.

01:47:25.000 And that changes things.

01:47:26.000 That was when the, what was it, NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, came into play and Obama said it was indefinite detention of people without trials.

01:47:37.000 And Obama was like, well, I'll never use that. 0.95

01:47:39.000 Okay, then don't fucking make it a law. 0.98

01:47:41.000 Right. 0.97

01:47:42.000 Because what if someone comes along after you, and then who comes along after him?

01:47:46.000 Trump.

01:47:46.000 Like, hey, buddy.

01:47:48.000 Like, you know, like, there's a guy who is a critic of Putin that just got sentenced today to, I believe, there's a lot, yeah, nine years.

01:47:59.000 He's already been in jail.

01:47:59.000 Oh, Navalny.

01:48:00.000 Navalny had years added to his sentence, yeah.

01:48:02.000 Yeah, like that kind of thing.

01:48:04.000 The bridge between that kind of thing and the NDAA is not that far.

01:48:10.000 This ability to criticize someone is very important.

01:48:14.000 And as soon as you restrict that ability or restrict people's ability to communicate or say controversial things or say things that you don't agree with, you're getting close. 0.95

01:48:23.000 You're bringing those things together and it's fucking dangerous.

01:48:26.000 It's really dangerous when you start doing that because it keeps moving. 0.92

01:48:30.000 It doesn't stop If you don't have an absolute line of free speech, then you decide what should and shouldn't be censored.

01:48:37.000 And as soon as you do that, then it becomes subjective.

01:48:40.000 You can apply all sorts of logic and reasons why someone who you don't agree with should be removed from the conversation.

01:48:48.000 And you could do so in bad faith.

01:48:50.000 You could do so because it's going to cost you financially or it's politically uncomfortable, whatever it is.

01:48:58.000 Dude, I think this has made people lose their minds, right?

01:49:00.000 Like, network computers have made people lose their minds.

01:49:02.000 The reality is that, like, freedom of speech, people don't actually want freedom.

01:49:06.000 They say they do, but they don't, right?

01:49:07.000 Like, once their enemy, like, gets a platform, it, like, goes out the window.

01:49:12.000 And getting back to our topic about religion, I think liberalism requires a certain religious belief and certain rights, and our nation is defined by a sacred document that's adjudicated by this, like, rabbinical court called the Supreme Court.

01:49:23.000 And all our political struggles end up being religious struggles almost because we do have this sort of credo-religious belief in our country.

01:49:31.000 And I think you really have to maintain that civic religion alive to have things like the level of freedom of speech that the Constitution implies.

01:49:38.000 I think we've lost that civic religion.

01:49:40.000 We've lost that faith in the United States.

01:49:42.000 Yeah, it needs to be something that both sides espouse.

01:49:49.000 That's something that both sides talk about openly and agree to because we are a community.

01:49:57.000 Whether we disagree about certain aspects of our laws and the way we communicate or whatever.

01:50:04.000 That's fine.

01:50:04.000 But we should have some rigid, rock-solid, fundamental principles that we apply to communication and to rights.

01:50:13.000 And if we don't do that, we're just...

01:50:18.000 We're losing our perspective.

01:50:19.000 We're losing the thing that made this country so exceptional, this exercise in self-government.

01:50:27.000 It's a unique place.

01:50:29.000 And as soon as you start fucking with that and limiting freedom, you see knuckleheads on television say that they think that maybe the First Amendment and the Second Amendment need revision. 0.96

01:50:39.000 Like, okay. 0.98

01:50:40.000 By who?

01:50:41.000 By you?

01:50:42.000 By your minds?

01:50:43.000 Your ideology?

01:50:46.000 Yeah.

01:50:48.000 Getting back to the Judaism thing, that's what I love about Judaism.

01:50:50.000 You've got the Ten Commandments.

01:50:51.000 This is the Torah.

01:50:52.000 You have to point to some document and say, we agree on this.

01:50:55.000 This is the metaphysical belief that we need to have a core moral foundation that nobody disagrees about.

01:51:01.000 And then on top of that, you can layer thousands of years, or in our case, hundreds of years of conversation.

01:51:05.000 But I think we've lost those moral foundations.

01:51:08.000 Like you said, there's people who want to abolish the First and Second Amendment.

01:51:11.000 When you say that you got in a lot of trouble with Apple, what kind of trouble did you get with Apple?

01:51:17.000 I hate talking about it because it's like this weird random thing with Apple is so overshadowed every other thing I've done in the world.

01:51:23.000 And it's weird.

01:51:23.000 Like the driver who drove me to the airport, he's like, oh, are you like going on Rogan?

01:51:27.000 Because I guess it's the same company or whatever.

01:51:29.000 And...

01:51:30.000 It's like, yeah, I think I'm going on because of this thing with Apple, and then he had his deal with Spotify, and he's like, oh wait, you're the Apple guy?

01:51:36.000 Oh, so he knew?

01:51:38.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:51:39.000 Or she knew, but yeah.

01:51:40.000 She knew.

01:51:40.000 Sorry, I'm sexist.

01:51:42.000 I assume it's a mail driver.

01:51:43.000 So what was the Apple thing?

01:51:45.000 So what happened?

01:51:45.000 Yeah, okay.

01:51:45.000 So I did this book thing.

01:51:47.000 I became like a media talking head, wrote for Wired Magazine and other outlets, and did the whole media thing, blue check thing.

01:51:53.000 Drove me completely crazy, because I don't really think I'm suited to it.

01:51:57.000 I went back to tech.

01:51:58.000 I work for a big founders fund company called Branch Metrics, building a new ads platform.

01:52:01.000 That was interesting for a year and a half, two years.

01:52:03.000 And then I went to Apple because Apple is also building an ads platform.

01:52:07.000 My career, for better or worse, has been turning human eyeballs and data into money in various forms.

01:52:11.000 It's what I do.

01:52:12.000 It's what I know how to do.

01:52:13.000 I know how to create an ad system.

01:52:14.000 There aren't that many people who know how to do that.

01:52:16.000 Apple is creating an ad system.

01:52:18.000 It's not a secret anymore.

01:52:19.000 You'll see ads if you scroll down on your search on your iPhone.

01:52:25.000 So I was working at Apple.

01:52:28.000 In some sense, I'm getting a little older.

01:52:29.000 I wasn't doing another startup.

01:52:30.000 It's not retirement exactly, but you're working for a big company.

01:52:34.000 I changed my LinkedIn to reflect the fact that I worked at Apple, which I did.

01:52:39.000 Then what happened, which we've now seen in many companies, and I was the first of this at Apple, there was a Slack mob that You know, kind of conjured itself and objected to the fact that I wrote this book, you know, what, five, six years ago now.

01:52:52.000 That at the time, again, to be clear, it was hardly a secret.

01:52:55.000 Bestseller list, NPR book of the year, Wired book of the year. 0.94

01:52:57.000 Not to, like, toot my own horn, but, like, it's about a secret as Christmas fucking day at this point. 0.86

01:53:01.000 Like, it's not a secret. 0.97

01:53:01.000 They knew about it. 0.97

01:53:02.000 Like, my references, they asked about it.

01:53:04.000 Because it's a little unusual to hire, like, a writer in a place that's very discreet, like Apple, whatever.

01:53:09.000 So, yeah, and they hired me, whatever.

01:53:10.000 And then, yeah, there was a slack mob...

01:53:13.000 I can't talk too much about it because a lot of it's under NDA, but I can talk about what's public.

01:53:16.000 You know, Apple management panicked, and as a result of the whole mob thing, they kind of fired me, and that was the end of that.

01:53:23.000 So when you say a Slack mob, what do you mean by that?

01:53:26.000 So Slack, for those who aren't familiar, it's like this tool that is almost like a version of in-house corporate Facebook that you post.

01:53:33.000 There's message threads.

01:53:34.000 It's a collaboration tool.

01:53:35.000 So it's people that worked for Apple that disagreed with you being in the company because of Chaos Monkeys.

01:53:42.000 Right.

01:53:42.000 Which, you know, as I've described, what pisses me off most about it is that in some sense, they, among all the rest of it, they mischaracterize the book.

01:53:50.000 Because, you know, there's a couple passages in there that are a little salty, right?

01:53:53.000 It's like, it's a work of literary nonfiction told in the voice of like a Michael Lewis or a Hunter S. Thompson or a Tom Wolfe.

01:53:59.000 So it's not like a dry business book.

01:54:01.000 It's like, oh, look a crazy tech guy doing this crazy thing.

01:54:03.000 But it was told in a certain literary voice.

01:54:06.000 And, you know, fast forward five years, some of the jokes...

01:54:09.000 Yeah, we're a little crude and we're a little salty.

01:54:12.000 Nothing crazy salty, in my opinion.

01:54:14.000 You're trying to be entertaining. 0.98

01:54:14.000 I was trying to be entertaining because the book's got to fucking sell. 0.98

01:54:17.000 Right. 0.94

01:54:17.000 But to be clear, 99.9% of the book is about entrepreneurship, how Silicon Valley works, the internal culture at these companies, how the ad world works, like we talked about targeting. 0.94

01:54:27.000 It's about that.

01:54:28.000 It's not about...

01:54:30.000 One of the salty jokes is about dating in San Francisco and what's that like.

01:54:33.000 Literally, it's like a one-paragraph comment on it that's quoted out of context.

01:54:37.000 I was actually praising the mother of my first kid saying, oh, this woman's amazing, unlike these other women that I went dating with, which is a conversation we've all had.

01:54:45.000 It's like, oh, dating in this city is so hard, whatever.

01:54:47.000 It was that sort of joke, basically.

01:54:48.000 But, of course, it misses the context that I'm pro this woman that I'm in love with, and it's so great that I'm not dating these other women or whatever.

01:54:57.000 That was the statement.

01:54:59.000 But they took that out of context and a few other little comments here and there.

01:55:02.000 Ignored all the rest of the book, which again, most of it's about life inside Facebook and startups and whatever.

01:55:07.000 It has nothing to do with...

01:55:08.000 And Apple caved?

01:55:09.000 Apple caved.

01:55:10.000 I know.

01:55:10.000 What?

01:55:11.000 Two plus trillion dollar company caved.

01:55:14.000 And I think...

01:55:15.000 We can talk about this cancellation thing if you want to, but one of the key aspects of these cancellation mobs, or these cancellation coups as I call them, is that the politics are often deeply unpopular.

01:55:24.000 I think something like 1% or less of Apple employees signed whatever petition it was to fire me.

01:55:30.000 This mob was a very vocal but small minority inside the company.

01:55:34.000 And yeah, Apple just freaked out and, you know, this is publicly known, freaked out and fired me within a day. 0.99

01:55:40.000 I wonder what would happen if Apple said fuck off to those people. 0.99

01:55:44.000 Is that possible at this point? 1.00

01:55:45.000 Do you think they've reached this?

01:55:47.000 Oh, yeah.

01:55:47.000 Well, most of them got, by the way, after the fact, most of them got fired, the leaders of the Slack mob, actually.

01:55:51.000 Really?

01:55:52.000 Yeah.

01:55:53.000 And Apple never reached back out to you? 1.00

01:55:54.000 Go, hey, we fucked up. 0.99

01:55:55.000 I can't talk about that. 0.98

01:55:56.000 But, I mean, about the firing the other employees, that's publicly, that's been reported on, so that's public.

01:56:04.000 Yeah.

01:56:23.000 5% of the company took it, and the company's doing fine.

01:56:26.000 And that's the end of that.

01:56:27.000 Right.

01:56:27.000 Well, I think that there's a real thing that people love to do today where they consider themselves an activist.

01:56:33.000 Right.

01:56:34.000 And part of being an activist is if someone says something that you don't agree with, you can get them fired.

01:56:39.000 Right.

01:56:39.000 And it's a weird kind of activism.

01:56:43.000 Right.

01:56:45.000 It's mob mentality.

01:56:47.000 You're deciding that you want someone to suffer because they have an opinion that's different than yours.

01:56:53.000 Or that they say something that you think is objective.

01:56:55.000 And you can feel good while doing it.

01:56:56.000 You're literally in a mob, but you can feel a sense of moral righteousness.

01:57:00.000 It is just the greatest moral treat.

01:57:02.000 Well, that is Twitter.

01:57:04.000 I mean, in so many ways.

01:57:06.000 That's a large part of what people like to do that people find gross about Twitter.

01:57:11.000 And I don't get it.

01:57:13.000 I'm just allergic.

01:57:14.000 Like, that mob mentality, I just can't do it. 0.99

01:57:16.000 I just fucking hate it. 0.99

01:57:17.000 It's because you're not a loser. 1.00

01:57:18.000 Right.

01:57:19.000 Because most of those people that do that are truly unexceptional people.

01:57:23.000 That's why they want to do it.

01:57:24.000 And a lot of the people they attack are exceptional.

01:57:28.000 And that's just natural human nature.

01:57:32.000 People that...

01:57:33.000 Have an inclination to mob up and gang up on people for things like that.

01:57:39.000 Generally speaking, they're failures, or at least not exceptional.

01:57:45.000 They're not what they would like to be.

01:57:47.000 They're not anything that's standing out of the order.

01:57:50.000 They're not exceptional.

01:57:53.000 They're not unique people. 1.00

01:57:56.000 Outliers where they're really out there kicking ass. 0.95

01:57:58.000 It's not the kind of people that do that. 0.98

01:58:00.000 It's the kind of people that are...

01:58:02.000 There's a culture today in society.

01:58:07.000 There's a lot of people that think that they deserve more than they're receiving.

01:58:11.000 And they look at other people that are doing really well and for whatever reason they decide that that person doesn't deserve it.

01:58:19.000 And part of it is because they're not... 0.98

01:58:20.000 It's not like you see someone doing well and you go, wow, how the fuck did he make it? 0.88

01:58:24.000 Well, whatever. 0.93

01:58:25.000 But instead you say, how did he make it?

01:58:28.000 We need to attack him. 0.97

01:58:29.000 We need to take him down. 1.00

01:58:30.000 And those people are almost entirely losers. 1.00

01:58:34.000 Yeah, there's a lot of losers out there. 1.00

01:58:36.000 But when you see a loser's text on Twitter, it's the same font. 0.99

01:58:41.000 They use the same language.

01:58:43.000 You don't know their background.

01:58:44.000 You don't know what they're doing in their own life.

01:58:46.000 You see their words.

01:58:47.000 You don't know what's the motivation behind it.

01:58:50.000 And those words carry a similar meaning and a similar impact to a person who's rational and compassionate.

01:58:58.000 It's a weird time when it comes to communication.

01:59:00.000 You know what would solve this?

01:59:02.000 Bringing back dueling.

01:59:03.000 That's what it would be.

01:59:04.000 Because robbing somebody of their livelihood, I think, is actually a major affront.

01:59:07.000 Like, you're literally, what I use to feed my kids and pay for housing, you're robbing me of that for some moral crusade.

01:59:14.000 You've got to square up and you've got to either face off at 40 paces or go into the ring.

01:59:19.000 That's a major affront.

01:59:20.000 And you shouldn't just be able to do that anonymously playing this little video game called Twitter.

01:59:24.000 Well, it's kind of a verbal assault.

01:59:26.000 In some ways, you're attacking.

01:59:30.000 You are doing something with language where you're attacking someone.

01:59:36.000 It's one thing if you're going after someone.

01:59:39.000 You're exposing a criminal who's stealing money from people.

01:59:44.000 You're a journalist.

01:59:45.000 You found this loophole where someone's robbing old ladies out of their retirement fund.

01:59:50.000 But if you're just trying to cancel someone because you don't like the jokes they wrote in a book about tech, about their own life, and you want to get them fired from a job that has literally nothing to do with that book.

02:00:00.000 Nothing to do with it.

02:00:01.000 Yeah.

02:00:01.000 And there's no actual behavior at this company, which is one thing that I want to clarify.

02:00:04.000 So can you talk about that?

02:00:07.000 Are you in a lawsuit?

02:00:09.000 I can't really talk about that.

02:00:10.000 No, no need to.

02:00:11.000 No need to.

02:00:13.000 What is it like being in those companies, whether it's Facebook or any sort of tech company? 0.99

02:00:22.000 For someone on the outside, we look at it and we say, how are those fucking places run? 0.51

02:00:28.000 I've had a good friend who was a big executive at Google, and now she works at another large tech company. 0.98

02:00:36.000 And the way she described it to me, she's like, it is utter madness.

02:00:40.000 It's utter madness and the lunatics are running the asylum to a certain extent because there's a lot of people, the company that she works for now, there's a lot of people that are inside the company that legitimately are mentally ill and they consider themselves activists and they have to placate them because it's a certain percentage of the population of the people that work for the company and they're the loudest and they oftentimes don't get work done and when confronted they talk about their activism and she's like,

02:01:08.000 listen, You are here for, you know, X amount of hours a day. 1.00

02:01:11.000 This is your fucking job. 1.00

02:01:13.000 You're not an activist. 1.00

02:01:14.000 And don't think that if you're complaining about other things that this company does, that you doing that is a part of your job, because it is not.

02:01:23.000 Yeah, I mean, I think the companies are somewhat to blame, because they've done the whole, like, bring the real self to work thing, right?

02:01:29.000 And again...

02:01:29.000 What is that?

02:01:31.000 There's this philosophy among, like, the HR there that, like...

02:01:35.000 And if you're being cynical about it, it's engineered to get the most productivity out of you.

02:01:38.000 If you work at some of these companies, particularly, again, to answer your question, I think it depends what stage of the company you join.

02:01:44.000 But if you're talking about big companies like Apple, Google, Facebook Now, it's a campus.

02:01:50.000 It's a lifestyle.

02:01:51.000 They do your laundry for you.

02:01:52.000 They feed you.

02:01:53.000 They do?

02:01:53.000 They do your laundry?

02:01:54.000 They can.

02:01:55.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:01:56.000 Apple does your laundry? 0.71

02:01:57.000 I'm not sure about Apple, because we were never in office because it was still under COVID, but Facebook had laundry.

02:02:01.000 I'm sure Google does, yeah.

02:02:02.000 Whoa.

02:02:03.000 Yeah, it's weird.

02:02:04.000 You join...

02:02:06.000 It's a strained analogy, but it's kind of like a cult.

02:02:08.000 And there's like a massive amount of corporate culture.

02:02:10.000 Like I described this a lot in Chaos Monkeys.

02:02:12.000 Who said that?

02:02:13.000 Who said that quote that every successful startup is a cult?

02:02:16.000 I think it was Keith Raboy, I think, from Founders Fund.

02:02:18.000 And the thing is, he's right.

02:02:20.000 He's right.

02:02:21.000 Like Facebook was a cult and I joined it and I was a happy member of it.

02:02:24.000 It was very powerful.

02:02:25.000 Everyone sacrificed themselves for the sake of the Facebook empire and its emperor.

02:02:28.000 Did it change your own personal thinking while you were there in the cult?

02:02:34.000 Oh, yeah.

02:02:34.000 Did you subscribe to Kool-Aid?

02:02:36.000 Oh, yeah.

02:02:36.000 I totally bled blue.

02:02:37.000 I still do, to a certain degree.

02:02:39.000 Because, again, it's a formative experience.

02:02:41.000 Some of the most impactful professional work I did was there, like it or not. 0.97

02:02:47.000 Taking Facebook ads from the shitty, stupid little iPad offer ads on the right to literally the thing you just looked at or bought, which I know sounds cringy, whatever. 0.94

02:02:55.000 That changed everything. 0.99

02:02:57.000 I was one of many, to be clear.

02:02:58.000 It wasn't just me, but that changed everything about that company and was super impactful inside the industry.

02:03:03.000 How much of an impact did it have when Apple came along and introduced these restrictions?

02:03:09.000 Oh, huge.

02:03:10.000 You were talking about ATT, which is like the ads transparency thing.

02:03:13.000 For those who don't know, if you've got an iPhone, you download an app and suddenly there's this opt-in that Apple is showing you saying, hey, do you want to share your data with these people?

02:03:21.000 That's hugely impactful.

02:03:22.000 What that does is...

02:03:23.000 So why does that matter?

02:03:25.000 So Apple controls this.

02:03:26.000 They create the hardware and the software and all of it, right?

02:03:28.000 At the end of the day, seen from Apple's point of view, Facebook, as powerful as it seems, is just another app in the App Store, right?

02:03:35.000 Which was always Zuck's fear, which is why he wanted to build a phone.

02:03:39.000 Apple can say, look, Facebook, you don't get to track users as well as you used to.

02:03:43.000 You can't track Joe Rogan down or anonymously your device ID. You can't do that anymore.

02:03:47.000 You only get a certain level of granularity.

02:03:50.000 How much tracking were they able to do before that?

02:03:52.000 Well, I mean, an infinite amount.

02:03:53.000 They would track you individually.

02:03:55.000 I mean, whether it's worth doing it, that's another matter.

02:03:56.000 But they would get the individual device ID from your phone.

02:03:59.000 And so they would know who you are in terms of that phone.

02:04:02.000 What does that entail?

02:04:05.000 Again, if you go to Cabela's and buy a thing, then you're playing a casual game and they show you an ad.

02:04:15.000 You playing that game and you buying that thing in Combellus can be individually joined in a very precise way.

02:04:21.000 And if you remove that and say, oh, you can't track Joe Rogan's phone, you're tracking 100,000 people at a throw, then they bucketize you.

02:04:30.000 They put you in a bucket that isn't quite as precise as before.

02:04:32.000 And what that translates into is fewer clicks, fewer sales.

02:04:35.000 Like, the effective amount of money that either the advertiser makes or the publisher that's showing the ad makes goes down.

02:04:42.000 Now, is this for the end user, for the person who has the phone?

02:04:46.000 Is it beneficial that they've instituted these policies?

02:04:51.000 Good question.

02:04:54.000 If you get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside knowing you're not being individually tracked, yes.

02:04:58.000 But other than that...

02:05:01.000 Not particularly.

02:05:02.000 But it also doesn't give up the access to your data that's this very valuable commodity for Facebook, right?

02:05:13.000 So here's the tricky thing about data, right?

02:05:15.000 One of the many misconceptions that I try to address in the book about how Facebook works is it's often not Facebook data that's being used to target you.

02:05:22.000 Because if you think about Facebook, right, it's like you're posting random photos, you're engaging with content, but a lot of your commercial activity, like booking airplane flights, shopping for shit, Doesn't happen on Facebook.

02:05:32.000 Facebook doesn't know about that, strictly speaking. 0.98

02:05:34.000 So how do they solve that problem that, like, we got to show him fucking shoe ads and Facebook doesn't know shit about what shoes you like? 0.97

02:05:41.000 So part of this is what I described in the book and what I helped build in the early stages. 0.97

02:05:45.000 There's a way of joining you, Joe Rogan, Facebook you to Cabela's you in some relatively data-safe way that lets Cabela show you an ad for those shoes. 0.99

02:05:54.000 Facebook doesn't necessarily know all the Cabela shit because Cabela doesn't want to let Facebook know that shit because they don't trust Facebook. 0.90

02:06:00.000 And so a lot of the stuff that's going on isn't like, oh, Facebook knows everything about you. 0.99

02:06:04.000 It's like, no, Facebook knows who you are on every device because you tend to use Facebook everywhere.

02:06:08.000 Maybe not you, but other people.

02:06:09.000 And so that means that they can join you very well to all the other commercial activity you do.

02:06:13.000 And you use Facebook a lot.

02:06:15.000 So they have lots of opportunities to maybe show you an ad.

02:06:17.000 So that's really Facebook's strength.

02:06:20.000 But getting back to your original question, how does Apple fuck that up?

02:06:23.000 Well, it fucks it up because it doesn't know who you are on that device at the individual granular level anymore.

02:06:28.000 And so it can't talk to Cabela and say, oh, that guy who looked for these weird things, like show them this ad, that can't happen anymore.

02:06:35.000 Is it in any way negative for the person who's the end user?

02:06:40.000 Good question.

02:06:41.000 Because maybe you would want to see those ads because this is something that you're actually interested in purchasing.

02:06:47.000 I mean, in the happy case, but let's face it, I mean...

02:06:49.000 In the happy case.

02:06:50.000 Well, if you're a person who's, you know, you have full control over your urges. 0.97

02:06:56.000 You're not a person who's just like, you know, you can't afford something, but you buy it anyway because you're fucking crazy and you saw the ad and you can't help yourself. 0.94

02:07:03.000 Because we know that there are people like that out there, right? 0.76

02:07:05.000 So in the best case scenario, is it better?

02:07:10.000 I would think so.

02:07:12.000 But isn't that like what you do as a business? 1.00

02:07:16.000 I think the status quo is a lot better than the stupid punch-the-monkey ads. 0.99

02:07:19.000 Remember those ads in display band? 0.99

02:07:21.000 You probably don't remember them, but in Yahoo.com back in the day, there'd be a little moving targeting to punch the monkey. 0.89

02:07:26.000 You can either see that bullshit, or you can actually see an ad that maybe has a chance of being relevant in Instagram feed.

02:07:31.000 Do you give anything up to have those relative ads? 0.98

02:07:36.000 No.

02:07:37.000 In fact, you gain things.

02:07:38.000 A lot of services wouldn't exist if they weren't paid for via ads.

02:07:41.000 The reality is...

02:07:43.000 If Facebook's ads start sucking more, i.e., the amount of money they make per ads goes down, they're just going to show you more ads.

02:07:48.000 So do you think that Android phones handle it better?

02:07:52.000 Because Android phones allow more of those things in?

02:07:54.000 Man, it's a super wonky question.

02:07:55.000 I wasn't expecting this.

02:07:56.000 It's wonky?

02:07:57.000 No, it's good.

02:07:58.000 I love talking about it.

02:08:01.000 The model that Google and Apple have are somewhat different.

02:08:32.000 Being more open to the outside.

02:08:33.000 Mind you, they still use monopoly power in various ways, like they're not saints.

02:08:37.000 But Apple has a more closed-mote approach to it.

02:08:40.000 I mean, that's why they're building an ad system because they want to make money in ads, but they're not going to go the Google route.

02:08:44.000 They're going to build more than likely.

02:08:46.000 I mean, not that I have deep insight into it anymore.

02:08:48.000 But more than likely, they're going to build it themselves because they have a more closed vision of it.

02:08:53.000 How they think about data privacy.

02:08:54.000 Here's another thing.

02:08:55.000 If you want to geek out, One direction Apple's going that's kind of interesting is that a lot of the data for your iPhone's going to live on device.

02:09:01.000 Like, in other words, for the past 20-plus years of internet, we've had this model where, like, you do shit on a phone, data goes into the cloud, weird shit happens, and you get shown a page or an experience.

02:09:11.000 A lot of that's changing, right? 0.87

02:09:12.000 Like, probably most of what you do on a phone is through an app.

02:09:15.000 It's not a browser anymore.

02:09:16.000 It's like the code is running on your phone.

02:09:18.000 You're producing data on that phone. 0.94

02:09:20.000 Like, why shouldn't the computation and all the shit that happens happen on the phone?

02:09:22.000 These phones are actually pretty powerful. 0.93

02:09:24.000 Right.

02:09:24.000 And so a lot of things are moving in that direction for a bunch of reasons.

02:09:28.000 One of the reasons actually is privacy.

02:09:30.000 And, you know, Apple and other companies have made public statements about this.

02:09:33.000 It's like, oh, it's more private.

02:09:34.000 Like, what's the ultimate opt-out?

02:09:35.000 My data's on this phone.

02:09:36.000 You know what I do? 1.00

02:09:37.000 I take it and I throw it into the fucking lake. 1.00

02:09:39.000 Their data's gone. 1.00

02:09:40.000 Right.

02:09:40.000 While, like, opt-out and deletion when the data's in the cloud and a bunch of third parties have it, you never really know, right?

02:09:46.000 Right.

02:09:46.000 But if you keep the data on the phone, it is better in many ways, right?

02:09:50.000 It also feels creepier, right?

02:09:51.000 One of the things Apple did recently, I don't know if you followed the story, they launched a system to catch what's called CSAM, which is a child sexually exploitive material, which you can kiddie porn, basically.

02:10:01.000 And they launched a system that would, it's complicated, but would scan photos on your phone, basically.

02:10:07.000 Yeah, I heard about that, which is weird.

02:10:10.000 Right, and it's funny, because it is that on-device paradigm.

02:10:13.000 It's like, okay, if you've got the photos...

02:10:16.000 From what I recall, they would only scan photos that were going to get synced to iCloud anyhow, but they were doing what's called looking at the hash of the image on your phone.

02:10:26.000 So it was code running on your phone.

02:10:27.000 And people felt like that was an intrusion, and people kind of basically revolted about it.

02:10:33.000 I'm not sure if they discontinued the program or not, but...

02:10:35.000 Well, the problem is, like, what if you have a photo of your son naked in a kiddie pool laughing in your backyard and he's two? 0.96

02:10:44.000 Is that kiddie porn? 0.98

02:10:45.000 Right.

02:10:46.000 There's a couple things that could go wrong here, right?

02:10:47.000 How does the false positive, like, an innocent person getting...

02:10:51.000 What if you get flagged?

02:10:52.000 Right.

02:10:52.000 One is, you've got a photo that just happens...

02:10:54.000 The way it would typically work is there's a database of...

02:10:57.000 You know, child exploited material, and they look for it on your phone.

02:11:00.000 And they do what's called hashing the image.

02:11:01.000 What basically that means is, like, decompose this complicated image into, like, a simple string that could be easily compared, right?

02:11:07.000 And say, like, this is the image now.

02:11:09.000 If you've got an image that happens to map to that, then you could have a collision in that space, and it's like, oh, it's kiddie porn, but it's not.

02:11:15.000 Or you just have a random image.

02:11:17.000 The way these images work, like a lot of researchers found, like a random image of a dog would actually map to this other thing, right?

02:11:22.000 So there's lots of ways of getting it wrong.

02:11:24.000 And of course, Apple assured people that they wouldn't get it wrong because of this and that.

02:11:27.000 But it's scary, right?

02:11:28.000 Like getting maligned as being like a kiddie porn guy when it's just like a picture of your kid or even like a random picture.

02:11:34.000 That is scary.

02:11:35.000 What's also scary to people is the idea that someone could hack into your device and implant some sort of questionable material. 0.99

02:11:43.000 Oh yeah, like fucking... 0.98

02:11:44.000 I'm in this high school group with People I went to high school with on WhatsApp. 1.00

02:11:49.000 It's a bunch of fucking bros from Miami. 1.00

02:11:51.000 They post all sorts of stupid shit that I would not normally share or want on my phone. 1.00

02:11:55.000 But WhatsApp by default saves those images to iPhoto. 1.00

02:11:59.000 And so you can imagine the sort of shit they post. 0.97

02:12:01.000 And it ends up in my photos reel in Apple. 1.00

02:12:03.000 I was like, dude, what the fuck? 1.00

02:12:04.000 Don't send me this shit. 1.00

02:12:05.000 That sort of thing could happen. 1.00

02:12:06.000 Yeah.

02:12:07.000 And someone could send you something. 0.96

02:12:09.000 I have some really ridiculous friends. 0.93

02:12:12.000 They could send you something that's actually illegal. 0.98

02:12:14.000 Right.

02:12:14.000 Yeah.

02:12:16.000 It's a problem. 0.98

02:12:16.000 The flip side of it, just to take the other side of it, is like, dude, there's a lot of fucking kiddie power and... 0.98

02:12:22.000 A lot. 0.99

02:12:23.000 A lot of child sexual exploitation that you would...

02:12:26.000 Someone sent me this article about 108 people that got arrested for child sexual exploitation and four of them were Disney employees. 1.00

02:12:35.000 And my friend was like, I can't believe how many fucking pedos are out there. 0.99

02:12:39.000 And I'm like, I bet there's a lot more than we think. 0.99

02:12:41.000 A lot more.

02:12:43.000 Yeah, it was in that little island.

02:12:45.000 I lived on Orcas Island, this idyllic little island.

02:12:46.000 The guy who ran the bagel shop got arrested in an FBI sting.

02:12:51.000 They were in some either telegram or signal group passing around this sort of material. 0.96

02:12:55.000 And the FBI fucking showed up on some island in the northwest and like arrested dude in the middle of his business. 0.88

02:12:59.000 And, you know, I was curious because it's like a local case. 0.96

02:13:01.000 So I went and read the federal indictment, which is public record.

02:13:04.000 You can go read it.

02:13:04.000 I would not advise reading it, by the way, because I think part of what they do is they include details and materials in the indictment to make the person look as guilty as possible.

02:13:11.000 And so they describe the images, which are disgusting, obviously.

02:13:14.000 I know.

02:13:14.000 It's worse than you can imagine.

02:13:16.000 I wouldn't advise anybody going and seeing it or even reading about it.

02:13:20.000 It's the most revolting thing you can possibly imagine. 1.00

02:13:22.000 It's like, yeah, that motherfucker should go to jail. 1.00

02:13:24.000 It should absolutely go to jail. 1.00

02:13:25.000 So it's a moral tradeoff.

02:13:27.000 Yeah, and there's a very bizarre argument that somehow or another seeing those images keeps people from actually performing acts of violence on children. 0.99

02:13:37.000 But that is a fucking shifty argument. 0.80

02:13:40.000 And there's another even shifty argument that CGI versions of child pornography should be acceptable because it's like a way that they can get it out of their system or whatever. 1.00

02:13:56.000 Yeah, it's just fuck that it's real. 0.99

02:13:59.000 It's just fuck that that's a real, like, hidden sort of secret part of our society that there are people out there. 1.00

02:14:07.000 Like, I have a friend who almost had his child kidnapped the other day. 0.99

02:14:10.000 Like, someone was trying to lure his kid literally into a van. 1.00

02:14:15.000 Dude, that's when the fucking glock comes out. 1.00

02:14:17.000 Oh my god. 1.00

02:14:18.000 It's so scary.

02:14:20.000 It's so scary.

02:14:21.000 I mean, he was at a park and luckily he pays attention.

02:14:24.000 But what happens if you don't and then the kid's gone and you have no way to find them and they're gone forever?

02:14:30.000 Like what?

02:14:31.000 Like how many houses are there to search?

02:14:33.000 How many people are there to look at?

02:14:35.000 How far did they drive with your kid?

02:14:38.000 They've got these tracking watches for kids that you can put on them so you can know where they are.

02:14:41.000 Jesus Christ.

02:14:42.000 And that's when the government says, all you need is a chip.

02:14:46.000 Just take a chip and we're going to put a chip in your child and we'll find your child everywhere. 0.97

02:14:52.000 Man, this went dark pretty fast. 1.00

02:14:53.000 Dude, when you start talking about child exploitation, that's some of the scariest shit in our society. 0.97

02:14:58.000 The fact that we have this first world, super advanced, like the most progressive society on earth, essentially. 0.98

02:15:06.000 The most freedom, the most...

02:15:08.000 And that there's still, with our moral foundation, our ethics...

02:15:15.000 21st century, like, as advanced as we can in terms of the way we feel about people's rights, and that still, still, there's people out there that want to do that to children.

02:15:29.000 Yeah, it's dark.

02:15:30.000 Especially for people like you and I who have them, who have children.

02:15:33.000 Oh yeah, when you have kids, suddenly...

02:15:34.000 Changes everything.

02:15:35.000 ...any aggression or violence towards children literally fills you with the most murderous rage instantly.

02:15:40.000 My friend Jim Brewer said that best.

02:15:42.000 When we were talking once, he said, I now understand murder.

02:15:47.000 He goes, I never understood murder.

02:15:49.000 Why would anybody want to kill somebody?

02:15:50.000 But if you want to harm my kid, I get murder.

02:15:52.000 He goes, I understand it.

02:15:53.000 And he's a very peaceful guy.

02:15:56.000 It's a part of...

02:15:59.000 You know, you're always going to have...

02:16:02.000 When you have a spectrum of behavior, you're always going to have the worst on...

02:16:07.000 Some end of the spectrum.

02:16:08.000 It's going to be the worst possible scenario of what kind of human exists.

02:16:15.000 And that's when someone will step in and say, well, you want that censored, right?

02:16:20.000 And you go, of course.

02:16:23.000 But isn't that different?

02:16:27.000 Yeah.

02:16:28.000 I mean, I think the free speech standard in the U.S. that like, you know, imminent lawless action, like if you're actually like browsing a crowd to like go kill somebody or do something illegal, that's where the state should step in.

02:16:38.000 There's actual physical harm or crime.

02:16:41.000 And doxing and things along those lines.

02:16:43.000 Yeah.

02:16:43.000 So we were talking about Google phones.

02:16:45.000 Yeah.

02:16:46.000 How significant is the difference to the end user if you have, say, an Android phone versus an Apple phone in terms of privacy?

02:16:54.000 There is the issue of encryption, like iMessages are encrypted, but someone could hack into your iCloud and gain access to your iMessages, right?

02:17:07.000 Yeah.

02:17:09.000 I mean, from the privacy perspective, I'd probably say Apple's probably a better phone if you're totally paranoid about it.

02:17:13.000 For example, Google still, for most advertisers, makes available that unique device that Io was talking about.

02:17:19.000 Like, they don't have the ATT thing.

02:17:20.000 And so if you're really paranoid about that, Apple's probably.

02:17:23.000 As much as, you know, I've had a rough history with that company.

02:17:26.000 What if you're using something like WhatsApp or, you know, Signal or something like that that has...

02:17:32.000 I'm not a crypto expert, but WhatsApp, in theory, is end-to-end encrypted.

02:17:36.000 That means that literally from your phone to their phone, it's encrypted.

02:17:38.000 And even Facebook, they can see the traffic, certainly, but they supposedly can't actually read what you're writing.

02:17:44.000 That word, supposedly, is not a good word.

02:17:45.000 Well, by contrast, Signal, which I use a lot, is open source.

02:17:50.000 And so the world has looked at the code that, in theory at least, is running on the phones.

02:17:55.000 And so there, it's, in theory, safe.

02:17:58.000 In theory.

02:17:59.000 In theory.

02:18:01.000 Yeah.

02:18:01.000 Yeah, I use signals well.

02:18:03.000 Oh, do you?

02:18:04.000 Yeah.

02:18:04.000 I just, you know, I never know.

02:18:07.000 Edward Norton.

02:18:10.000 Edward Snowden recommended it.

02:18:13.000 So I'm like, okay, listen to that guy.

02:18:15.000 If anybody knows about privacy.

02:18:17.000 Dude, the reality is my life is so boring that even the FBI was seeing everything.

02:18:20.000 What would happen?

02:18:22.000 Yeah, but that's an argument my friend used when the NSA was caught spying on people.

02:18:28.000 Like, what are they going to find?

02:18:29.000 I'm like, that's not the point.

02:18:31.000 The point is it's human beings that have access to your data, and they shouldn't.

02:18:36.000 People shouldn't be allowed to just read your email, especially when it's a national security agency.

02:18:42.000 And they can put you in jail.

02:18:42.000 That's it.

02:18:43.000 And the government, they have guns, put you in jail.

02:18:44.000 Exactly.

02:18:45.000 Exactly. 0.98

02:18:45.000 My privacy, when it comes to somebody trying to sell me shoes, I don't give a fuck. 0.98

02:18:49.000 But when it comes to the government, a different story. 0.99

02:18:51.000 But you have to look in perspective.

02:18:54.000 Think about how the Apple employees targeted you for things taken out of context in your book. 0.99

02:18:59.000 What if someone takes things out of context in your emails and uses that as evidence that you're a piece of shit in a trial where they're trying to convict you and they're trying to sway the jury? 0.98

02:19:10.000 That's where it gets sketchy, right? 0.98

02:19:13.000 Yeah, but, you know, there's this, like, truism in startup life that, like, for most companies, it's not a technical problem that's a problem, it's a human problem.

02:19:20.000 And those problems are actually harder to solve.

02:19:22.000 Technical problems have some solutions, right?

02:19:24.000 So, do you think that, like, the technical solutions to human problems are just, like, prophylactic?

02:19:30.000 I mean, they're helpful.

02:19:31.000 Like, I use Signal and I like it.

02:19:32.000 But at the end of the day, you have to believe in rule of law and honest courts.

02:19:35.000 And that's the real solution to it.

02:19:38.000 I think one thing you can criticize, I think, tech for is that it's a solutionist mentality that thinks that there's literally a technical solution to everything.

02:19:46.000 And I don't buy that, actually.

02:19:48.000 I think, yeah.

02:19:49.000 You're using an Apple phone.

02:19:51.000 I hate to call you out, but you... 0.68

02:19:53.000 I used to be Android, but then, it's funny, when I was getting the Apple job, I bought a pile of Apple shit as part of my due diligence, and so that's the phone that I bought when I got the offer. 0.83

02:20:01.000 Did you think about switching back? 0.75

02:20:04.000 No.

02:20:05.000 I mean, I don't hate the company that much, no.

02:20:07.000 No?

02:20:07.000 No.

02:20:08.000 But is it a different experience?

02:20:10.000 Is it a better experience for you in terms of knowing that they don't give you the targeted ads?

02:20:18.000 What's better to you?

02:20:21.000 I like the Android.

02:20:22.000 I think the Pixel phone is a fine phone. 1.00

02:20:23.000 I think people who shit on Android phones coming from the iPhone world are kind of dumb a little bit. 0.99

02:20:28.000 I don't think they haven't used a recent phone. 0.99

02:20:30.000 They're just different.

02:20:32.000 A lot of what I do is on the Google stack, like Calendar and Gmail and stuff, which integrates really nicely with Android.

02:20:37.000 A lot of Apple software and services historically, I think, haven't been quite as good, although that is changing.

02:20:41.000 So, I don't know.

02:20:42.000 I could probably go either way.

02:20:44.000 I think people who like Switch and like, oh, this sucks, it's just like, it's just muscle memory.

02:20:48.000 They just haven't.

02:20:48.000 Not accustomed to it.

02:20:49.000 Yeah, that's it.

02:20:49.000 Yeah, there's certain things about Apple phones that I like and certain things about Android phones that I like.

02:20:53.000 Do you use both?

02:20:54.000 Yeah.

02:20:55.000 Oh, really?

02:20:55.000 Oh, cool.

02:20:55.000 I have a Samsung and I have an iPhone.

02:20:58.000 I use both.

02:20:58.000 Yeah.

02:21:01.000 The innovations come out quicker on Android phones.

02:21:04.000 They do, actually.

02:21:05.000 Yeah, like I have an Android Fold, one of those ones. 0.96

02:21:07.000 If I want to watch a video, it's fucking like a little tablet. 0.92

02:21:10.000 It's pretty dope, you know? 0.99

02:21:13.000 But it's also funny that people get upset when they get a green text, like, shut the fuck up. 1.00

02:21:17.000 Yeah, who gives a fuck? 1.00

02:21:18.000 That's like the stupidest fucking thing to be a snob about. 1.00

02:21:19.000 You don't like the color of the text? 1.00

02:21:22.000 Oh, God.

02:21:22.000 Guess what?

02:21:23.000 On the Android phone, it doesn't show up that way.

02:21:24.000 It could be all kinds of different colors.

02:21:26.000 It's customizable.

02:21:28.000 And then again, if you're using Signal, which I like to use Signal anyway.

02:21:31.000 I'd say it's only in the U.S. people still use text.

02:21:32.000 Like overseas, it's mostly WhatsApp or Signal or whatever else.

02:21:35.000 They don't actually even use texting.

02:21:36.000 They do that too because it's cheaper, right?

02:21:40.000 It's cheaper.

02:21:41.000 That's why WhatsApp took off virally overseas because texting could be expensive in these countries and it was essentially free.

02:21:47.000 While in the U.S. they always had like the 300 texts a month.

02:21:50.000 Like it was functionally free and nobody cared about it.

02:21:52.000 So it wasn't that big a deal.

02:21:53.000 Do you think that privacy and this thing that's going on where Apple is sort of cutting off the stream of ad revenue that used to exist, do you think that that's going to shape,

02:22:09.000 in many ways, the future of how cell phones integrate into networks and systems?

02:22:15.000 Huge way.

02:22:16.000 I mean, there's a bunch of reasons for doing it, right?

02:22:19.000 From the vibe that I got in my brief time there, I think people like Tim Cook and senior management care about privacy. 0.97

02:22:23.000 It's not just like a bullshit line.

02:22:25.000 That said, strategically, it totally benefits them, the fact that they have tighter control of the data on that phone that only they make. 0.81

02:22:32.000 So it happens to line up very nicely.

02:22:35.000 And yeah, I think part of the reason why I joined, like why would you join a big slow company when you're like this tech entrepreneur guy or whatever?

02:22:44.000 Google and Apple are going to define that future in mobile, right?

02:22:47.000 And I think people like – or players like Facebook are going to be second fiddle.

02:22:50.000 They're just going to be apps in their ecosystems.

02:22:52.000 And so, yeah, I think it's going to change the way the – and this business, if this on-device thing takes off, that's going to change the way a lot of things work.

02:23:00.000 How are they going to implement that?

02:23:01.000 It'll just be – it'll be slowly and, like – Well, this child filter thing, right?

02:23:07.000 They all just deploy code that lives on your phone, and that the data lives on your phone.

02:23:12.000 And the ad system eventually will probably move in this direction as well, if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly.

02:23:17.000 And so what that means is when you browse, again, you're shopping for Cabela's shit or whatever on your fucking phone, that data just doesn't leave the phone, and Cabela's targets you on the phone with an ad experience on Apple, and your data never left the phone. 0.91

02:23:30.000 So how would they know that you're browsing for Cabela's? 0.98

02:23:35.000 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of complicated tricks about it, like what's called differential privacy, federated learning.

02:23:42.000 There's a lot of little clever hacks.

02:23:44.000 Because you might ask, like, well, but then how do you train models?

02:23:46.000 Like, how do you know, like, how do you train from, like, a million phones to know that, like, a guy who does this should see that ad?

02:23:52.000 Like, how do you collectively learn it?

02:23:54.000 Because an individual is not going to generate enough data on one phone.

02:23:57.000 There's clever hacks around that that try to collect that information in relatively privacy-safe ways.

02:24:02.000 Come up with a model that says, oh, if he's looking for X, show them Y. But then have your data never really leave the phone and do it that way.

02:24:09.000 It's a very different way of engineering things.

02:24:10.000 Yeah, because I was talking to a friend and we were discussing privacy and GPS. And they were saying you should never use Waze and never use Google Maps.

02:24:24.000 You should use Apple because Apple destroys all the data.

02:24:27.000 And I'm like, yeah, but you also don't get as good of an experience.

02:24:31.000 Right.

02:24:31.000 Right, because you want to know where the speed traps are.

02:24:33.000 That's how they know where the speed traps are, because everyone reports it.

02:24:35.000 Well, not only that, where the accidents are, what's the best route to get around the traffic.

02:24:38.000 They're far superior.

02:24:41.000 Waze was acquired by Google, but Waze is far superior.

02:24:45.000 And it's so superior, they've set up cops in certain areas in New Jersey where they don't allow people to drive through the neighborhood that don't live there.

02:24:53.000 Because so many people were routing traffic through there via Waze that it was causing these traffic jams in these, like, sleepy communities. 0.94

02:25:00.000 Because people figured out you could fucking speed right through this neighborhood.

02:25:03.000 And some people were violating speed limits, and so then they just started implementing cops, you know, and putting these stops where they're like, you can't drive here unless you live here, which is kind of... 0.98

02:25:14.000 Because you're supposed to be able to just drive wherever the fuck you want if it's an open neighborhood.

02:25:17.000 Right. 0.97

02:25:18.000 Here's one thing I would say about privacy.

02:25:19.000 Here's another thing I think people kind of misperceive.

02:25:21.000 A lot of the privacies are like your buddy there who's like, don't use Waze even though it's convenient.

02:25:25.000 People think about privacy in these very absolute ways, as an absolute right.

02:25:29.000 And I think in reality, people are very smart about it.

02:25:31.000 It's actually a commodity that they trade for other things, right?

02:25:34.000 So you trade some privacy for security, right?

02:25:37.000 Like the Fourth Amendment.

02:25:38.000 Like, you don't have absolute privacy from the government. 0.99

02:25:40.000 If you're dealing drugs, they can kick in the fucking door, assuming they actually have a judge's warrant. 0.97

02:25:44.000 And we all kind of collectively agree to that because we think, well, that's an okay compromise. 0.99

02:25:49.000 Or we trade some privacy for convenience. 0.94

02:25:51.000 It's like, okay, sure, Waze knows where I'm going, but I know where the fucking speed trap is, and that's pretty cool. 0.97

02:25:56.000 Or... 0.94

02:25:57.000 I posted about this interview.

02:25:59.000 I'm giving up some of my privacy in exchange for community because people will see it and they'll engage with it, whatever.

02:26:03.000 So I think a better way of thinking about privacy is not in absolute terms and this paranoid thing.

02:26:08.000 It's like, okay, am I getting value for my privacy?

02:26:10.000 Is what I'm giving up, is that worth it for what I'm getting?

02:26:14.000 And often it's not true. 1.00

02:26:15.000 It's like, no, this just sucks and you're just using your data and like, fuck that. 0.99

02:26:18.000 But very often it's like, yeah, I think people are very good at judging that. 1.00

02:26:22.000 I think people are smarter than people think.

02:26:24.000 Do you think most people even consider it? 1.00

02:26:26.000 I think it's a small percentage of people that are even paying attention to this shit. 0.99

02:26:29.000 So many people are just using stuff. 0.99

02:26:33.000 There's probably fewer people talking about it than you would get on Twitter.

02:26:37.000 And there's probably even fewer people who actually know how it works.

02:26:40.000 But I don't know. 0.99

02:26:40.000 I don't think people are that dumb. 0.99

02:26:42.000 And I think one of the interesting things about the whole anti-Facebook media cycle from 2016 is that if you were to look at the usage data for Facebook, you wouldn't be able to see where that backlash happened. 0.93

02:26:52.000 People didn't actually stop using Facebook.

02:26:54.000 Or they might have stopped using it for other reasons because they got bored of it and they moved to Instagram or whatever.

02:26:57.000 But was there an actual, for all this tech backlash, did people actually use Amazon less or Facebook less?

02:27:02.000 Particularly after COVID with, you know, people being locked in and all the rest of it.

02:27:05.000 Did people actually revolt against tech?

02:27:07.000 Or is that just an impression in some journalist and some commenter's mind?

02:27:10.000 I think it's mostly the latter, actually.

02:27:12.000 But that impression does have an influence on the stock price.

02:27:16.000 Right?

02:27:17.000 Doesn't it?

02:27:17.000 Maybe.

02:27:18.000 I mean, to the extent that it impacts revenue.

02:27:20.000 Well, what caused Meta or Facebook?

02:27:24.000 What caused them?

02:27:24.000 Is it turning it into Meta?

02:27:26.000 Like, what caused the stock crash?

02:27:28.000 Because the stock has significantly dropped, right?

02:27:31.000 I think there was a few things in that earnings release you're talking about, the one last quarter.

02:27:35.000 One of it was that I think growth slowed down, which is the first time in Facebook history.

02:27:38.000 And it's because of this implementation that Apple...

02:27:41.000 Oh, no, I don't think it was that.

02:27:42.000 I think...

02:27:43.000 No, no, I think it's just...

02:27:44.000 It's funny.

02:27:45.000 I kind of warn about this in the coda to the Chaos Monkeys.

02:27:50.000 Facebook has more users than, like, Christianity, right?

02:27:53.000 Most people on the Internet are on some Facebook property, either Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, right?

02:27:58.000 And so...

02:28:00.000 At some point, you run out of humans.

02:28:01.000 Like, you just don't have growth anymore.

02:28:03.000 That is a crazy statement.

02:28:04.000 Facebook has more users than Christianity.

02:28:07.000 Yes. 0.99

02:28:07.000 Who the fuck would have ever predicted that 20 years ago? 0.99

02:28:10.000 Isn't that wild? 0.99

02:28:12.000 How long has Facebook been around?

02:28:13.000 It hasn't even been 20 years.

02:28:14.000 Founded in the mid-aughts, I think.

02:28:17.000 2004, 2005. My God.

02:28:19.000 What a crazy statement.

02:28:21.000 So, in less than 20 years, something has arisen with more users than Christianity.

02:28:28.000 Than Christ.

02:28:29.000 Yes.

02:28:31.000 That's bonkers, man.

02:28:33.000 That really is.

02:28:34.000 It's really crazy when you think about it that way.

02:28:36.000 I think they're pushing 3 billion users.

02:28:38.000 Have you met Zuckerberg?

02:28:39.000 Yep.

02:28:40.000 How is he?

02:28:42.000 I don't know him personally well, to be clear.

02:28:44.000 But the book opens in the meeting where I'm pitching a lot of this crazy targeting stuff in a Zuck meeting because he had to approve it because it was a big step.

02:28:53.000 You know, he seemed to me somewhat cold and aloof, but definitely in charge.

02:28:58.000 Like, the wimpy, dweeby character in, like, The Social Network or that movie or whatever, that wasn't the vibe I got from him in the meetings I was in.

02:29:05.000 Maybe you decided to toughen up after that movie.

02:29:07.000 Like, oh, show them.

02:29:09.000 Dude, he's like an alpha male nerd.

02:29:11.000 Like, he's not... 0.61

02:29:12.000 And he used to have these challenges for himself, like learn Chinese, or do this, or only eat meat that he shot himself.

02:29:17.000 He would have these Nietzschean quests.

02:29:22.000 I've seen him speak Chinese in China, and they go crazy. 1.00

02:29:25.000 Supposedly it's good.

02:29:25.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:29:26.000 They go crazy because he is good at it.

02:29:28.000 Like, wow.

02:29:29.000 No, he's clearly an exceptional mind.

02:29:32.000 It's clear.

02:29:33.000 It's really interesting.

02:29:34.000 But also, the burden of responsibility of running a company that is deeply rooted in who knows how many countries it is now.

02:29:44.000 And so many people, when they buy phones in these other countries, Facebook is default installed on the operating system.

02:29:51.000 Or WhatsApp.

02:29:52.000 Yeah.

02:29:52.000 Wild.

02:29:55.000 And he's only like 38 or something?

02:29:57.000 How old is he?

02:29:58.000 He's a little younger than me, yeah.

02:29:59.000 He's like in his late 30s, yeah. 1.00

02:30:00.000 What the fuck, man? 1.00

02:30:02.000 Imagine. 1.00

02:30:03.000 Imagine trying to navigate that world and keeping your shit together. 1.00

02:30:06.000 You'd be cold and aloof, too. 1.00

02:30:08.000 I mean, I guess.

02:30:09.000 I'd imagine.

02:30:10.000 I saw him on Lex Friedman's podcast, and he seemed much more normal in communicating with Lex than I think I've ever seen him in anything.

02:30:18.000 He seemed more comfortable, you know?

02:30:21.000 I think he freezes up a little bit in public speaking.

02:30:23.000 Like, a lot of it's all hands.

02:30:24.000 He'd have a weekly all hands.

02:30:26.000 He didn't come across as charismatic.

02:30:27.000 I mean, there's a scene in the book that I mentioned once after it got excerpted in Vanity Fair.

02:30:31.000 Remember Google Plus? 0.87

02:30:32.000 I know everyone fucking forgot about Google Plus. 0.89

02:30:34.000 But at one point, Google Plus was a big deal. 0.94

02:30:35.000 And it was the first time that Facebook faced an existential crisis from another tech incumbent. 0.98

02:30:41.000 The company went fucking bonkers nuts. 0.95

02:30:42.000 He gave a speech, almost like a Roman senator on the Senate floor, of like, you know, Google must be destroyed and all this. 0.99

02:30:49.000 And it was kind of pretty inspiring, actually.

02:30:51.000 Really?

02:30:52.000 So he can definitely have his moments.

02:30:53.000 Yeah.

02:30:53.000 Google must be destroyed?

02:30:55.000 Well, no.

02:30:55.000 He quoted, I think it's Cato the Elder, a famous Roman senator.

02:30:58.000 And he would end all his speeches with, Carthage must be destroyed.

02:31:03.000 It was in the context of the Punic Wars.

02:31:04.000 And so he just randomly cited that and the implication was clear.

02:31:08.000 And just to give you an idea of how crazy Facebook was, like the same day, there was a printing, like a silk screening poster lab in the company.

02:31:15.000 They literally printed that phrase with like a Roman helmet and it appeared all over Facebook. 0.99

02:31:19.000 And then everyone stole the fucking posters. 0.99

02:31:21.000 They're all gone. 0.99

02:31:22.000 I had to struggle to find a photo because Vanity Fair wanted a photo of it and I couldn't find it because I didn't manage to steal one of the posters. 0.97

02:31:27.000 A friend sent me a photo before it got stolen or the fucking thing. 0.99

02:31:30.000 That's how crazy Facebook was. 0.99

02:31:32.000 I know it's laughable.

02:31:33.000 It's a joke.

02:31:35.000 What was his argument for destroying Google Plus?

02:31:37.000 Why did he think it was such a threat?

02:31:39.000 It was a competitive threat, obviously.

02:31:40.000 That's all it was.

02:31:41.000 But it wasn't. 0.99

02:31:41.000 It was janky and sucked. 0.99

02:31:44.000 My friend who was working at Google at the time when this was going on, she was telling me, like, this is going to take over. 0.97

02:31:48.000 This is going to be amazing. 0.98

02:31:49.000 I go, this is clunky and shitty. 0.97

02:31:51.000 This is a terrible experience. 0.97

02:31:52.000 The thing is, to defeat an existing incumbent, you can't just be, like, 10% or 20% better.

02:31:56.000 You have to be, like, 300% better.

02:31:57.000 And it wasn't anywhere near it.

02:31:58.000 It wasn't as good.

02:31:59.000 It wasn't even as good.

02:32:01.000 But look at the risk, though, right? 0.97

02:32:02.000 Google has so many other touchpoints, Gmail, YouTube, and they were plugging it with the fucking G-plus button everywhere. 0.96

02:32:07.000 Oh, yeah. 0.95

02:32:08.000 Which is basically a monopoly behavior.

02:32:09.000 Like, you're using your advantage in one market to take over another market, which is exactly what Microsoft did with the browser.

02:32:14.000 So the threat, the thought, was they were going to do that with Facebook.

02:32:17.000 But it's amazing how bad it was.

02:32:19.000 It still didn't work. 0.90

02:32:21.000 With all that input, all that influence, it still sucked. 0.91

02:32:25.000 Yeah. 0.84

02:32:26.000 Kind of shocking. 0.99

02:32:27.000 Yeah, at the end of the day, for all that struggle, he declared seven-day work weeks, balls out, the whole fucking thing. 0.99

02:32:32.000 End of the day, it just died. 0.99

02:32:34.000 Seven-day work weeks to kill Google Plus?

02:32:36.000 Oh, yeah, man.

02:32:37.000 They would serve meals on the weekend.

02:32:38.000 Oh, Christ.

02:32:38.000 There's a scene there where I go to Facebook on Sunday, full parking lot.

02:32:41.000 I go to Google, empty.

02:32:43.000 It's like, oh, okay.

02:32:44.000 I see who's really taking this for real.

02:32:48.000 At the time, again, Facebook is different now, I imagine.

02:32:50.000 But at the time...

02:32:51.000 You know, this wasn't that early.

02:32:52.000 Like, I wasn't that early employees.

02:32:53.000 Like, 2010 or 11?

02:32:55.000 11. And it still felt like a startup in the sense that it was hyper-motivated.

02:33:00.000 People were, like, super fucking hardcore. 0.63

02:33:03.000 Posters on the walls. 1.00

02:33:04.000 Everyone wearing the same shit. 1.00

02:33:05.000 I mean, I almost compare it to communist Cuba. 1.00

02:33:07.000 It's like, our great leader, our great system of values, posters on the wall, everyone dressed the same way.

02:33:11.000 What was the dress?

02:33:14.000 I mean, my uniform, they had this, I forget who makes it.

02:33:16.000 It might have been like American Apparel.

02:33:17.000 It was like this little fleece thing.

02:33:20.000 Some people had hoodies.

02:33:21.000 Some people had like the Facebook branded thing.

02:33:23.000 And I would wear like a regular shirt and like pants or whatever.

02:33:25.000 But you think the people, they definitely tailored their wardrobe to fit in?

02:33:31.000 I think it just became the default.

02:33:32.000 They'd have these things called hackathons where you spend like an all-nighter hacking on shit and you would get a t-shirt for that and it was like a badge of honor and you'd collect them because there'd be one like every month or two.

02:33:40.000 And so people would wear that. 0.88

02:33:41.000 You know, it's a lot of swags.

02:33:42.000 Like I was part of a team.

02:33:43.000 There was like an ads product that had like a logo.

02:33:46.000 Everything had a codename.

02:33:46.000 So there was like an owl on it.

02:33:47.000 So you'd wear like the owl shirt or whatever.

02:33:50.000 I know.

02:33:52.000 There's a phrase from Paul Graham who writes all these blog posts about tech and he runs this thing called Y Combinator.

02:33:58.000 And he said, if you brought back Lennon from the grave and brought him onto the campus of a large tech company, And he saw the posters on the wall, the great leaders, the uniforms.

02:34:06.000 He would think that communism had won.

02:34:09.000 That literally, this is it.

02:34:10.000 The dream came alive.

02:34:11.000 It's all true.

02:34:12.000 And then, of course, you would show them the bank accounts of the various people and like, well, not so fast, Vladimir.

02:34:18.000 This wasn't quite the Soviet Union.

02:34:20.000 But yeah, it was.

02:34:22.000 And obviously, it's not like living in Cuba, obviously.

02:34:24.000 There's real struggles there that are not at all.

02:34:26.000 Of course.

02:34:27.000 But it felt, definitely felt that way.

02:34:30.000 Is there the distribution of wealth in those companies?

02:34:35.000 Oh, yeah.

02:34:36.000 What is that like?

02:34:38.000 Excellent point.

02:34:39.000 Dude, you ask the best questions, Joe.

02:34:40.000 It's amazing.

02:34:42.000 That's exactly one of the issues, right?

02:34:46.000 The way these companies work, right?

02:34:48.000 Like, how early you are in the company defines your wealth and what fraction of the equity you get.

02:34:52.000 Because the real money is in the equity.

02:34:53.000 The salaries actually aren't that high.

02:34:54.000 I mean, they're healthy, but they're not crazy.

02:34:56.000 It's the equity where you really make the real money, right?

02:34:58.000 And the fraction you get, frankly, of, like, the cap table, like, the pie, changes by orders of magnitude, like, literally within, like, and the value of it, a year or two of joining.

02:35:07.000 So if I had joined Facebook, like, two or three years before, it would have changed the entire picture.

02:35:12.000 So what does that mean?

02:35:13.000 Like, say we're at Facebook.

02:35:14.000 You're my boss, right?

02:35:16.000 You could be my boss and maybe you joined later because you're just a more senior person.

02:35:20.000 You came laterally, right?

02:35:21.000 I'm worth whatever, X million, like a shit ton of money because I've been here since the very founding.

02:35:26.000 And I'm doing the same job as you, maybe even a more junior job, and I'm worth a fortune and you're not.

02:35:30.000 So what is that conversation like?

02:35:32.000 I go to...

02:35:34.000 I go, you know, scuba diving in Honduras on the weekend on a private jet, and you went and saw a movie in Mountain View.

02:35:39.000 And we come back, hey, so Joe, what'd you do on Monday?

02:35:41.000 And it's like, how's that convo go, right?

02:35:44.000 Because this guy is living in a different world than you.

02:35:46.000 Wow.

02:35:46.000 And everyone kind of knows it, but you can't talk about it, because obviously it's like super corrosive to morale.

02:35:51.000 But that's the reality.

02:35:52.000 So if everybody knows it, is it publicly discussed?

02:35:55.000 Is it disclosed?

02:35:56.000 Like, how do they know how much money these other people have?

02:35:59.000 Oh, no, you don't.

02:36:00.000 No, it's not public.

02:36:00.000 Nobody ever knows, really.

02:36:01.000 But they kind of know that it's a different world.

02:36:04.000 I mean, there's websites you can go at, like, see what the comp levels are so you can sort of get an idea.

02:36:09.000 But if you're talking about the early stage of a company, and it's so variable, right?

02:36:13.000 Like, I came in what's called an acquihire.

02:36:15.000 What that means is, like, they acquire a company, but really they're just buying you.

02:36:19.000 So it's just, like, a nice hiring offer.

02:36:22.000 And the numbers there can vary by a lot. 0.96

02:36:23.000 And if you just get hired via a college fucking recruitment fair, it's totally different.

02:36:27.000 And then again, as time goes on and Facebook shares go from $5 to $50, suddenly a 2x difference in stock has a major, or even more, has a major difference. 0.86

02:36:37.000 Wow.

02:36:38.000 So is there a bunch of resentment inside the company because of that?

02:36:43.000 Is there a call to adjust?

02:36:48.000 I didn't get that feeling.

02:36:49.000 Again, you don't know necessarily, right?

02:36:51.000 It's a bit of blind man's bluff.

02:36:52.000 There's no way to actually know the pay delta.

02:36:55.000 So I don't think there's a lot of resentment there.

02:36:58.000 I mean, in theory, the rewards should vary with the risk, but I'm not sure it's true.

02:37:02.000 To be honest, if I were giving startup advice, joining as an early employee at a startup, I mean, now startup wages are pretty good, so you're not taking such a big financial risk.

02:37:10.000 But to be honest, the fall-off and the upside between a founder and an early employee is massive.

02:37:16.000 It's by orders of magnitude, potentially. 0.99

02:37:18.000 And it's like, you're taking the same fucking risk? 0.99

02:37:20.000 It's like day one of the fucking company, right? 0.99

02:37:22.000 And like, are you actually going to get filthy rich? 0.99

02:37:25.000 If it becomes Google, of course, everybody gets rich in a Google-Facebook scenario.

02:37:28.000 The reality is most companies don't, right?

02:37:30.000 They either fail, most fail, or they have like a middling outcome, like the company sells for a certain amount. 0.98

02:37:34.000 It's like, okay, it's a healthy outcome, but it's not like everyone, including the fucking dog walker, is a million. 0.97

02:37:39.000 Like, no. 0.95

02:37:40.000 That's why it's fascinating when a person like Zuckerberg exists, right? 0.82

02:37:45.000 Where one person does develop a company that does manage to become fucking insanely enormous.

02:37:56.000 Yeah, it's hard for me to imagine what the world looks like through his eyes.

02:37:59.000 Your entire world, I mean, I've seen it through the eyes of founders of smaller companies.

02:38:03.000 And even there, like I've known people who have found nothing Facebook size, but, you know, a few hundred people worth a billion or more.

02:38:10.000 On paper, they're worth maybe a hundred million or something.

02:38:13.000 And it's weird.

02:38:13.000 They become like the son of a solar system that revolves around them, right?

02:38:16.000 Everything from their executive assistant to their therapist to the person who walks their dog to all their work life.

02:38:21.000 They're at the center of this thing, and the whole world revolves around them.

02:38:25.000 And it kind of warps the perspective.

02:38:28.000 And in the case of Zuck, it must be even more so.

02:38:30.000 Well, it warps perspective for famous people.

02:38:34.000 My wife had a conversation with me the other day.

02:38:36.000 We were talking about something, and I thanked her for bringing it up.

02:38:40.000 Because we had a candid conversation about it.

02:38:42.000 I go, thank you.

02:38:43.000 I needed to talk about that.

02:38:44.000 I needed to hear that from you.

02:38:45.000 And she goes, you know nobody talks to you, right?

02:38:48.000 I go, what do you mean?

02:38:49.000 She goes, nobody really talks to you.

02:38:51.000 I see how people talk when you're not there, and I see how people talk when you're around.

02:38:55.000 Everybody gets weird when you're around.

02:38:57.000 Right.

02:38:58.000 And I'm like, yeah, I guess.

02:39:00.000 I guess I kind of know that, but I don't know that.

02:39:03.000 I mean, I know it, but that's my life.

02:39:04.000 You know, that's my experience.

02:39:06.000 I have to be aware of it, but I have no reference point.

02:39:11.000 It's like these European folktales where the king dresses as a commoner and goes talk to his people.

02:39:15.000 You've got to just get a really good disguise and go out there and talk to your bros and see what they say.

02:39:19.000 I should probably get some makeup. 1.00

02:39:21.000 Artificial nose and shit. 1.00

02:39:22.000 They can do it. 1.00

02:39:23.000 You saw the werewolf out there. 1.00

02:39:25.000 If someone can make something like that, they can make some wild shit. 0.99

02:39:28.000 Are you currently involved in tech now, or are you just doing your blog and your Substack? 0.98

02:39:36.000 What are you up to?

02:39:38.000 Yeah, I've got a few things going on.

02:39:39.000 I wear a few hats.

02:39:40.000 So I've got the Substack deal.

02:39:41.000 The Substack guys are great, and they gave me a pro deal to take it seriously.

02:39:45.000 It's a full-time thing.

02:39:46.000 And so it's like a book advance.

02:39:47.000 They front you money, and then you drive subs.

02:39:50.000 And that's been interesting.

02:39:52.000 I've got a podcast show on this app called Colin that's kind of like Clubhouse.

02:39:56.000 Remember Clubhouse, which was like the social audio thing?

02:39:58.000 I do, because Naval was trying to tell me that it was going to take off. 1.00

02:40:01.000 I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. 0.99

02:40:03.000 And it did during COVID. Right. 1.00

02:40:04.000 Like, he was saying, I'm so high on this.

02:40:07.000 He was an investor.

02:40:08.000 He was an investor, obviously.

02:40:09.000 I think he wanted me to talk it up as well. 0.92

02:40:10.000 But I got on with Tim Dillon, and we did it after a podcast once, and I was shitting all over it.

02:40:14.000 I was like, this is crazy. 0.53

02:40:15.000 He's like, well, it's private.

02:40:16.000 I go, this ain't private. 0.94

02:40:17.000 I go, someone's going to fucking put this online. 0.85

02:40:19.000 Literally an hour after we did it, it was on YouTube. 0.96

02:40:22.000 It's like, come on, man. 0.99

02:40:24.000 This is the fucking internet. 0.98

02:40:26.000 I do think there's something to unscripted social audio that's different than a podcast. 0.99

02:40:32.000 Sure.

02:40:33.000 Conversations with people.

02:40:35.000 You just decide randomly, out of nowhere, to have a phone conversation with Lex Friedman, and you guys both upload it.

02:40:43.000 Yeah, for sure.

02:40:44.000 Definitely.

02:40:45.000 Twitter Spaces does it.

02:40:46.000 There's this app called Call-In, backed by this guy, David Sachs.

02:40:49.000 Twitter Spaces still exists?

02:40:51.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:40:51.000 If you go to Top of Twitter, you should see...

02:40:53.000 So that's a thing, like where people are talking on the phone like that?

02:40:56.000 I didn't know that that was even going on.

02:40:58.000 Yeah.

02:40:58.000 It seems to have a decent amount of engagement.

02:41:00.000 Here's the question.

02:41:00.000 How come no one has figured out an alternative to Twitter?

02:41:03.000 I mean, I know Getter existed, but then when I got on Getter, one of the first things that I noticed is that Getter imported all of my Twitter followers and tried to pretend I had 9 million followers on Getter.

02:41:13.000 I'm like, how is that?

02:41:14.000 You don't even have 9 million users.

02:41:17.000 How is this?

02:41:17.000 This is shenanigans.

02:41:18.000 Correct.

02:41:21.000 How come no one's figured out another Twitter?

02:41:24.000 Because of network effects, like...

02:41:28.000 All these Twitter alternatives are always some, like, right-wing thing where it's, like, unfettered conversations or whatever.

02:41:33.000 But it's like, dude, like, A, I don't think the censorship on Twitter is that bad for most people.

02:41:39.000 That's such that they would actually switch because of that.

02:41:40.000 If you're somebody really on the edge, maybe.

02:41:42.000 And also, like, you want the opposing side there to make fun of.

02:41:45.000 Like, that creates the spark.

02:41:46.000 That creates the tension.

02:41:47.000 Who wants to sit in a totally right-wing Twitter?

02:41:50.000 I wouldn't want to.

02:41:51.000 No, I don't want to do that.

02:41:52.000 But I also don't like—do you know what the Babylon Bee is?

02:41:56.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:41:56.000 Did you see that they got banned from Twitter?

02:41:58.000 They're funny as shit. 0.99

02:41:58.000 Hilarious. 0.99

02:41:59.000 They got banned from Twitter for saying Rachel Levine is the man of the year.

02:42:02.000 Right.

02:42:03.000 I saw that.

02:42:03.000 And they won't even take it down, which I salute them.

02:42:06.000 I mean, that's a fucking ballsy move because they're going to lose their Twitter account because they're saying, you know, like, it's true. 0.78

02:42:13.000 But it's not true that she's the man of the year. 0.98

02:42:16.000 I mean, it's true that it's a biological male, but... 0.96

02:42:18.000 The fact that they have the balls to say, we're not deleting this. 0.96

02:42:22.000 I'm like, I support that. 0.93

02:42:24.000 But I don't support them getting banned for that. 0.99

02:42:26.000 That's a fucking joke. 1.00

02:42:27.000 You can't crack a joke. 1.00

02:42:30.000 Web3 solves this.

02:42:32.000 Decentralized.

02:42:33.000 Decentralization.

02:42:34.000 Do you think that that is something that would be adopted universally by a large amount of people?

02:42:39.000 We'll see.

02:42:40.000 I mean, in general, I'm kind of pro-Web3.

02:42:42.000 I think it's a fascinating thing, and I hope to actually move into that direction myself.

02:42:46.000 Can you just, for the non...

02:42:48.000 Sure.

02:42:50.000 It's funny.

02:42:50.000 I don't feel like I'm a total crypto...

02:42:52.000 As you can tell, I don't talk about things that I don't feel I'm a domain expert.

02:42:54.000 I always feel like I'm on thin ice, but...

02:42:57.000 I'll do it and possibly run the risk of crypto bro rage.

02:43:00.000 So Web3 is interesting.

02:43:02.000 I'm sure your listeners have heard of Bitcoin and maybe Ethereum and stuff.

02:43:05.000 Those are interesting financial applications of it, which is totally valid and cool.

02:43:10.000 But if you can imagine a bigger vision of that, of decentralization as you're describing, One way I get at it, it's like, what is Web 3?

02:43:17.000 Why is it called Web 3?

02:43:18.000 What the fuck is Web 2?

02:43:19.000 What is Web 1? 0.95

02:43:21.000 So Web 2 is like everything we know.

02:43:23.000 It's like Facebook, Twitter. 0.97

02:43:23.000 It's like these gated platforms in which if Babylon Bee pisses off the fucking Twitter people, then they just get thrown off the platform. 0.97

02:43:31.000 They don't own anything. 0.88

02:43:34.000 In many ways, what the Web3 people want to recreate is Web1, which we're both old enough, and some of your listeners, I'm sure, old enough to remember, like, email, FTP, Telnet, like, core protocol, HTTP, like the web, right?

02:43:47.000 These are core protocols that aren't defined by, like...

02:43:49.000 Facebook or Twitter saying, this is the way the world works.

02:43:51.000 No, we agree that when you send an email, this is what the actual document needs to look like for you to receive a valid email, and there's no way to kick anybody off email.

02:44:01.000 Gmail might say, we don't want to give you a Gmail account anymore, but email as such is not shut down for you.

02:44:06.000 You can still send email.

02:44:08.000 And so Web3, in a trustless environment, with not people necessarily agreeing in direct ways, coming up with a way to recreate a way to say, Hey, I own this thing, like an NFT, like a picture of an ape, say.

02:44:21.000 I own this thing, and the world thinks I own this thing, and it's not a function of Sotheby's or an auction house or whatever saying that I own this thing.

02:44:28.000 In theory, that's how it should work.

02:44:30.000 So that's the idea.

02:44:30.000 So you imagine a Web3 version of Twitter.

02:44:32.000 How does it work? 1.00

02:44:33.000 You post a fucking thing. 0.99

02:44:34.000 It exists in this thing called a blockchain, which is basically a public database that we all agree on that everyone maintains via various mechanisms we have to get into. 0.99

02:44:41.000 And that's it.

02:44:42.000 And then I can have, in the same way that email just works, I have an app that sits on top of it that reads that and renders it to me in some Twitter-like way, but there's no Twitter that can just say, Babylon Bee, you don't exist anymore, or Donald Trump, get off of Twitter.

02:44:56.000 That's the goal.

02:44:57.000 Interesting.

02:44:58.000 And you think that that's possible to implement large scale, like to have the whole country adopt it?

02:45:04.000 Like, what would it take?

02:45:05.000 Do you think it would take some sort of egregious censorship thing?

02:45:08.000 Like, I think Donald Trump being kicked off Twitter was a step in that direction, where so many people were so furious at the idea that you could take a sitting president and remove him from your social media platform, that this could, like, you needed something along those lines, maybe even more egregious?

02:45:26.000 Like you said about privacy, I think those aspects to your average person who isn't living on the edge and posting weird, crazy shit, isn't that convincing?

02:45:34.000 I think for Web3 to take off, and to be clear, my career has not been in consumer internet.

02:45:38.000 It's been on the back end, monetizing the usage.

02:45:40.000 But if I were to bet on this...

02:45:43.000 There has to be something new and cool that Web3 enables that just doesn't exist that's going to drive that adoption.

02:45:49.000 You're not going to convince people to leave Twitter for the new Web3 version of Twitter just because, oh, there's less censorship going on, right?

02:45:55.000 I don't think that it's really a top-of-mind issue for most users.

02:45:58.000 What's interesting is Twitter still allows pornography, right?

02:46:02.000 Dude, when I search for random names that collide with a porn star's name, I see porn.

02:46:05.000 I don't know if it's legal.

02:46:05.000 I don't think it's allowed.

02:46:06.000 You don't think it's allowed?

02:46:07.000 I mean, it was for a long time, right?

02:46:09.000 Was it?

02:46:10.000 Okay.

02:46:10.000 Yes.

02:46:10.000 I mean, for a long time.

02:46:12.000 I mean, there's no way they don't know that porn stars are going to post pictures of them fucking. 1.00

02:46:17.000 I mean, they just do. 0.99

02:46:18.000 Like, if you follow porn stars and you click on their feed, you see a lot of sex.

02:46:24.000 That seems to be still allowed. 0.99

02:46:27.000 But a fake exploding head will get you kicked off. 0.99

02:46:30.000 We're still talking about that guy. 0.61

02:46:31.000 Yes!

02:46:32.000 Calling Rachel Levine the man will get you kicked off.

02:46:35.000 But you can watch people jizz into each other.

02:46:37.000 That's fine.

02:46:39.000 Wow.

02:46:41.000 Right?

02:46:41.000 Yeah.

02:46:42.000 Although I think most people probably don't want porn in their Twitter experience, but yeah.

02:46:44.000 Well, some people obviously do, and they must have drawn some line.

02:46:49.000 I think it was probably during Jack's tenure, because Jack was a very pro-free speech Pro-First Amendment sort of a guy, and he wanted the option, he was advocating for the option of a Wild West version of Twitter.

02:47:03.000 Right. 0.94

02:47:03.000 Where you'd have a Twitter that's censored and moderated, but another Twitter that's just like fucking get crazy. 0.94

02:47:09.000 Yeah.

02:47:10.000 And no one else on board was interested in that option, I don't think, or at least not enough to actually get it moving.

02:47:17.000 Yeah.

02:47:17.000 A lot of what motivates Web3 is that crypto-libertarian aspect of tech that just wants to total freedom, the most minimalist thing, which I think it's powerful, and I think we should have it.

02:47:28.000 I think as time goes on, that's going to be more attractive to people, I believe.

02:47:32.000 You think so?

02:47:33.000 Yeah, that's what I would hope.

02:47:34.000 Do you think Gen Z cares about that? 1.00

02:47:36.000 I don't give a fuck about Gen Z, but the people who are alive are not just Gen Z. There's a lot of people that aren't Gen Z that are, you know, millennials and even Gen X that are aware of the problems and the pitfalls of allowing social media companies to dictate discourse,

02:47:52.000 to decide what's acceptable and not acceptable to say.

02:47:56.000 Yeah, I agree.

02:47:57.000 You look like you have to pee, do you?

02:47:58.000 No, no, no, totally not.

02:48:00.000 Just checking.

02:48:00.000 Most people, when it gets around three hours, they start squirming.

02:48:03.000 And I always wonder, it starts filling the back of my head, like, this guy might have to use the bathroom.

02:48:08.000 I do not have to pee, Joe.

02:48:09.000 Okay, good.

02:48:10.000 But I want to thank you for being here, man.

02:48:11.000 I really enjoyed our conversation.

02:48:13.000 Cool.

02:48:13.000 And I enjoy your Twitter, too.

02:48:14.000 Do you?

02:48:15.000 Okay, that's how this started, right?

02:48:16.000 Yes.

02:48:16.000 Because you followed me.

02:48:17.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:48:17.000 I read your Twitter.

02:48:18.000 You're a very sensible guy. 0.88

02:48:19.000 You say a lot of things and I'm like, guy's got balls.

02:48:21.000 He says things that I agree with. 0.53

02:48:23.000 He says, you're smart.

02:48:24.000 I appreciate that.

02:48:25.000 Thank you, Joe.

02:48:25.000 My pleasure.

02:48:26.000 So tell people your social media.

02:48:28.000 And one more time, your substack is the pull report.

02:48:32.000 The pullrequest.com.

02:48:34.000 Pullrequest.

02:48:34.000 There's a link on my Twitter profile.

02:48:36.000 Go to Twitter.

02:48:37.000 Antonio GM is where I'm at on Twitter.

02:48:40.000 I'm on this app called Colin as well.

02:48:42.000 Also pull request.

02:48:42.000 What is Colin?

02:48:43.000 Call-in is this clubhouse thing that I mentioned.

02:48:45.000 This is social app.

02:48:46.000 But you can find links to all that stuff on Twitter.

02:48:49.000 Twitter is really the place.

02:48:50.000 DMs are open.

02:48:51.000 You can DM me, although we'll see.

02:48:53.000 All right, good luck with that.

02:48:55.000 Your DMs are not open, I take it, Joe. 1.00

02:48:57.000 No, fuck no. 1.00

02:48:58.000 Fuck no. 1.00

02:48:59.000 Well, I may have to change that, but yeah. 0.99

02:49:00.000 Well, thank you very much.

02:49:01.000 Appreciate your time.

02:49:02.000 All right, bye everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 23, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1795 - Antonio Garcia Martinez

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