The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #999 - Tom Bilyeu

00:00:00.000 Five, four, three, two...

00:00:05.000 The infamous Jamie Countdown, and we're live, Tom!

00:00:08.000 What is up, man?

00:00:09.000 Tom, Bill, you, if you're wondering.

00:00:11.000 Bill, you.

00:00:12.000 People are wondering.

00:00:13.000 How do I say that?

00:00:14.000 Bill, you.

00:00:14.000 Dude, I've eaten more of your bars than any bar ever in the history of bars next to you in the Primal Kitchen bars.

00:00:22.000 Whoa.

00:00:23.000 All right.

00:00:23.000 That's it.

00:00:23.000 Well, I take that as an honor.

00:00:24.000 You're in fucking lofty company. 0.99

00:00:26.000 Rarefied air, man. 0.99

00:00:26.000 Yeah, that's awesome. 0.99

00:00:27.000 Those goddamn Quest bars are the shit. 1.00

00:00:29.000 Thank you. 1.00

00:00:29.000 Especially those chocolate brownie ones. 1.00

00:00:31.000 Dude.

00:00:31.000 Tell me about it.

00:00:32.000 You guys nailed it with those.

00:00:33.000 Thank you.

00:00:33.000 So what was the idea behind the companies?

00:00:36.000 Like some low sugar, low carb, nutrition?

00:00:38.000 Yeah, at the time that we were thinking of launching the company, there was nothing on the market that we would eat.

00:00:43.000 It either tasted terribly and was good for you, or it tasted great and was horrible for you.

00:00:48.000 So we wanted to create the first bar that tasted like it had sugar but didn't, and metabolically speaking had a great response.

00:00:53.000 Dude, it's a grind, man.

00:00:55.000 If you try to go on a keto diet and you try to find really good, healthy, delicious stuff to snack on, boy, here's a question.

00:01:06.000 Do Quest Bars kick you out of ketosis?

00:01:08.000 No.

00:01:09.000 Really?

00:01:10.000 No.

00:01:10.000 See, if I eat a full bar, I'm going to be out.

00:01:12.000 Really?

00:01:12.000 For sure.

00:01:12.000 But it only has like nine grams of carbs.

00:01:15.000 How many grams of carbs?

00:01:16.000 Yes, but the protein is high.

00:01:17.000 Well, it's actually less than that.

00:01:18.000 Do you count net carbs or full-blown?

00:01:21.000 You know what?

00:01:22.000 I'm very loose with it.

00:01:23.000 I don't do a whole lot of counting carbs.

00:01:25.000 For the most part, what I'm doing is eating whole foods.

00:01:27.000 The most part I'm doing is a lot of that Primal Kitchen.

00:01:34.000 You know that Chipotle mayo?

00:01:36.000 That Chipotle lime mayo?

00:01:37.000 I'm not bullshitting. 0.99

00:01:38.000 It's fucking fantastic. 0.99

00:01:40.000 I might eat a case of that a month and I'm not bullshitting. 0.99

00:01:44.000 I put it on everything because it's super high fat and really delicious.

00:01:47.000 So I put it on eggs.

00:01:49.000 I go cook up a couple of eggs in the morning and then I'll take some scoops of that chipotle lined mayo and just slop it on there with sliced jalapenos.

00:01:57.000 That is amazing.

00:01:57.000 So I'm getting a lot of fat.

00:01:58.000 Do you know the macros on it? 0.99

00:01:59.000 No, I don't calculate all that shit. 0.99

00:02:01.000 Really? 0.99

00:02:01.000 I'm not a nerd, bro. 0.99

00:02:02.000 But you stay in ketosis?

00:02:03.000 You can.

00:02:03.000 What?

00:02:04.000 Do you take your blood levels?

00:02:05.000 I have.

00:02:06.000 Yeah.

00:02:06.000 I have.

00:02:07.000 I mean, I don't do it on a regular basis.

00:02:09.000 I just essentially eat. 0.98

00:02:10.000 Well, what I'm doing is, for the most part, if I'm eating foods, the foods that I'm eating are very high fat, very low carbs, and then 20% of the time I fuck off. 0.98

00:02:24.000 20% of the time. 0.99

00:02:26.000 I try not to fuck off too hard with desserts and stuff like that. 0.99

00:02:30.000 Do you like desserts? 0.99

00:02:31.000 Yes.

00:02:32.000 Even on a keto diet, you don't find that that's reduced?

00:02:34.000 Yeah, it is reduced, but once you start eating the ice cream, you remember how awesome it is.

00:02:39.000 But a lot of exogenous ketones. 0.99

00:02:41.000 That I don't fuck with. 0.99

00:02:42.000 Never done. 0.99

00:02:43.000 Did I try it once?

00:02:45.000 I think I did. 0.99

00:02:45.000 I was told that it would help with a headache, and I was like, I call bullshit. 0.99

00:02:48.000 This is not affecting me at all. 0.94

00:02:50.000 Keto flu? 0.98

00:02:52.000 It wasn't when I had, I did have keto flu profoundly, but that's what happens when you're a dumbass the first time that you try going ketogenic. 0.98

00:03:00.000 How did you, what'd you do? 0.92

00:03:01.000 I went true four to one after a three-day fast.

00:03:05.000 Four to one, explain that to people.

00:03:06.000 So for every gram of combined protein and carbohydrate, I ate four grams of fat, which is brutally difficult to do.

00:03:14.000 You're never going to do it by accident.

00:03:15.000 I had a spreadsheet And everything that I ate had to go through the math.

00:03:20.000 So I had to figure out, like, what's this going to be as a total meal?

00:03:24.000 You literally have to, like, scrape every bit of oil out of the pan.

00:03:27.000 Like, you've got to be hardcore.

00:03:28.000 Sop up, like, if you've got cabbage or something, sop up all the oil to make sure that you're getting it all.

00:03:33.000 It was hateful.

00:03:34.000 I absolutely hated it. 0.98

00:03:35.000 It was so disgusting.

00:03:36.000 And Dom has talked about that.

00:03:37.000 The palatability of 4 to 1 is very, very low.

00:03:40.000 At the time, I thought I needed to do that.

00:03:42.000 I was trying to do cancer prevention.

00:03:44.000 So I went hard, hardcore, keto, trying to get the ratio between my blood glucose and my ketones right.

00:03:49.000 Were you experiencing health difficulties?

00:03:51.000 No.

00:03:51.000 But at Quest, we were really trying to experiment, find out what's the edge of this stuff.

00:03:55.000 We were putting millions of dollars into research, especially into cancer.

00:03:59.000 I'm trying to find out, like, does a ketogenic diet have the positive implications on cancer that we hope it does?

00:04:05.000 And at least in a clip that I saw on your show when Don was on, he was talking about that, the energy crisis that the cells go through that are cancerous.

00:04:14.000 Some forms of cancer, yeah.

00:04:17.000 Doesn't he think it's all of them?

00:04:19.000 I know some people are...

00:04:20.000 There was an article recently about brain cancer.

00:04:22.000 There was a type of brain cancer that actually lived off of fats.

00:04:25.000 That didn't respond to a low-carb diet.

00:04:28.000 I mean, I believe there's several different kinds of cancer, and so I don't know if all the data's in on that.

00:04:35.000 So your idea was just to do it, just to get yourself in a really healthy state and monitor your own body?

00:04:41.000 Yeah, my thing was like...

00:04:42.000 If it has that potential, it's worth trying, right?

00:04:46.000 What's a three-day fast?

00:04:46.000 Not a big deal.

00:04:47.000 And then two weeks of being in ketosis.

00:04:49.000 Going into it, I didn't know how hard it was going to be.

00:04:51.000 I didn't know what four to one was going to feel like.

00:04:53.000 And I didn't know how to supplement.

00:04:54.000 So it was real misery.

00:04:57.000 And I really did have what they call the keto flu.

00:04:59.000 You feel like you have the flu. 0.96

00:05:00.000 It sucked. 0.99

00:05:01.000 Wow. 0.95

00:05:01.000 And my whole thing is like being uber disciplined. 0.95

00:05:04.000 So once I commit to something, I'm not going to stop just because it sucks.

00:05:07.000 And I wasn't smart enough to go and ask somebody, like, what do you do?

00:05:11.000 Like, is there a way to supplement your way out of this?

00:05:14.000 So I just muscled through, but it was total misery.

00:05:16.000 I don't understand why you never tried exogenous ketones.

00:05:19.000 That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

00:05:20.000 Well, so you know Peter Atiyah, right?

00:05:22.000 No.

00:05:23.000 You don't know Peter Atiyah?

00:05:24.000 Who is he?

00:05:24.000 You have to immediately get him on your show.

00:05:26.000 So Peter Attia is a good friend of Dominic D'Agostino, so that would be an easy connect.

00:05:30.000 And he's a doctor, a physician.

00:05:33.000 He did a TED Talk, which crushed.

00:05:35.000 Absolutely amazing.

00:05:36.000 And he goes from practicing traditional medicine, and this is his TED Talk, so this isn't me, this is him saying it, being fairly judgmental about the people that he's treating.

00:05:45.000 This woman comes in, she has diabetes, and God, I think she was either there to have an amputation or she'd already had one. 1.00

00:05:53.000 Something.

00:05:53.000 Anyway, he realizes as he starts breaking all this down that this is like a human being.

00:05:59.000 And what they're doing isn't solving the problem.

00:06:01.000 So he's like, somewhere the system is failing a lot of people.

00:06:04.000 And how do we rectify it?

00:06:06.000 And as he's giving the TED talk, he starts crying.

00:06:08.000 It's so amazing.

00:06:10.000 Especially getting to know him and knowing that it's totally sincere.

00:06:12.000 This is not a guy faking it for the camera.

00:06:15.000 And so ends up completely changing his life.

00:06:17.000 He starts really trying to figure out what's going on metabolically, finds high fat, finds ketogenics.

00:06:23.000 For a while was known as the fat man or the keto man, I forget what they called him, but long before I'd ever heard of ketogenics.

00:06:31.000 And starts NUSI. Have you heard of NUSI? No.

00:06:34.000 Nutritional Science Initiative.

00:06:36.000 No.

00:06:36.000 Raises a ton of money, and they're trying to do real double-blind empirical studies on nutrition.

00:06:43.000 There's so much guesswork in all of this, we really want to prove it.

00:06:46.000 Ends up leaving that, I won't speak to why, I honestly don't know, but ends up leaving NUSI, founding a private practice as a high-end concierge guy.

00:06:55.000 We were trying to get him involved at Quest just because nutritionally this guy's mind is unreal.

00:07:00.000 And so talking to him about that stuff and him walking us through like keto flu and how you can actually supplement your way out of it and all that, but I unfortunately didn't know it at the time.

00:07:10.000 So yeah, I suffered needlessly.

00:07:12.000 Hmm.

00:07:13.000 So that's interesting.

00:07:15.000 The flu thing is a weird feeling, right?

00:07:16.000 Because your body just feels so weak and you don't understand it.

00:07:20.000 You've been eating and you almost are in denial.

00:07:23.000 Like, I can't believe that this is just carbs.

00:07:25.000 There's no way.

00:07:26.000 Like, this is something.

00:07:27.000 Something's going on.

00:07:28.000 Yeah, is it carbs or is it protein?

00:07:30.000 I mean, I guess gluconeogenesis is turning the protein into glucose, but it is weird.

00:07:36.000 Or is it that, and this I actually don't know the answer to, and I'm now outside my realm of what I understand, so full disclosure.

00:07:42.000 But there's obviously something in the micronutrients, because the people that later told me you could have supplemented your way out of this, they were talking about, and I don't remember well, but it was like magnesium and some other things.

00:07:52.000 It wasn't, oh, just, you know, have more...

00:08:07.000 I've been low carb for a very long time because I... If I am having a cheat weekend, you were talking about this just before we went live.

00:08:19.000 If I'm having a cheat weekend, you can hear me getting fatter.

00:08:23.000 It is so crazy how well my body turns a calorie into adipose tissue.

00:08:29.000 It's nuts.

00:08:30.000 So you get fatter quicker?

00:08:32.000 I get fat very, very fast, especially with carbohydrate.

00:08:36.000 But even if I spike my calories and they're all clean, I'll get fat fast.

00:08:40.000 Wow.

00:08:40.000 And this didn't used to be the case before you tried these low-carb diets?

00:08:44.000 No, this was always the case.

00:08:45.000 Always?

00:08:45.000 Oh, so you've always been that kind.

00:08:47.000 Yeah, that's why I tried low-carb.

00:08:48.000 Because I'm so frustrated with always having a wet look.

00:08:52.000 A wet look?

00:08:53.000 Yeah.

00:08:54.000 What's that?

00:08:54.000 Maybe I'm making that up.

00:08:55.000 So that's what my partners and I used to refer to, people like me, who just have a natural, smooth layer of fat.

00:09:02.000 I have to do so much cardio to get that dry look where you're just really tight.

00:09:08.000 Like, a massive amount of cardio.

00:09:10.000 And is that the case even with a low-carb diet?

00:09:14.000 Yeah, I'll get leaner on a low-carb diet, to be sure.

00:09:18.000 But...

00:09:19.000 It doesn't, like, if I want to be lean lean, I have to do cardio.

00:09:23.000 So you essentially got a really good adaptation body for famine.

00:09:27.000 Yeah, I'll survive a famine.

00:09:28.000 The zombie apocalypse, I've got you.

00:09:31.000 Like, I'm making it through that.

00:09:32.000 Hmm.

00:09:32.000 Very confident.

00:09:33.000 Do you watch Walking Dead?

00:09:35.000 Because a lot of people that think they're gonna make it, they don't make it, man.

00:09:37.000 I do watch Walking Dead, but I'm way behind.

00:09:40.000 I'm on, like, season three.

00:09:41.000 Where'd you stop?

00:09:42.000 Because people are telling me I'm gonna tap out.

00:09:44.000 They killed Glenn.

00:09:44.000 When they killed Glenn.

00:09:45.000 Oh, wow.

00:09:46.000 Oh.

00:09:46.000 It's a spoiler alert, I guess, right?

00:09:49.000 I made it that far.

00:09:50.000 I made it that far.

00:09:52.000 But yeah, no, we're beyond that.

00:09:53.000 But here's what I find interesting about that is I want to do some content on what are the 10 leadership lessons you can learn from The Walking Dead.

00:10:01.000 Because I think they're there.

00:10:02.000 That's what I find interesting about the show.

00:10:05.000 Rick is inconsistent.

00:10:07.000 Yes.

00:10:08.000 I'm not buying them in the last season.

00:10:09.000 That's why I bailed out.

00:10:11.000 I don't know, man. 0.99

00:10:12.000 I mean, what leadership things are you going to learn when everyone's turned to shit and a bunch of people killing each other? 0.98

00:10:17.000 All right, so let's go to one that you would have seen because it's before Glenn dies. 0.99

00:10:20.000 You've got the kid.

00:10:22.000 They find him at the bar, right?

00:10:24.000 They've got his teammates.

00:10:25.000 I don't have a better word for that.

00:10:26.000 His clan, whatever. 0.85

00:10:28.000 They go ballistic.

00:10:28.000 They start shooting.

00:10:29.000 You take him back to your place because you want to help him.

00:10:31.000 He paled his leg.

00:10:32.000 He's hurt. 1.00

00:10:33.000 Do you kill him? 0.99

00:10:33.000 Do you set him free? 0.99

00:10:34.000 What do you do?

00:10:35.000 Well, it's a TV show.

00:10:37.000 It's not real.

00:10:38.000 You don't have to be really around the guy.

00:10:41.000 You'd have to know.

00:10:42.000 I think it's part logic and part instinct when you're dealing with a situation like that. 0.98

00:10:47.000 How much of this guy's behavior was because he was stuck with a bunch of other shitty people? 0.90

00:10:51.000 And how different is he when he's free? 0.96

00:10:53.000 And how much does he listen to reason and logic?

00:10:56.000 And how much is he willing to contemplate the possibility that there's a better life if everybody works together? 1.00

00:11:00.000 If not, kill him. 1.00

00:11:03.000 If you think that he's immeasurably damaged, like maybe he's a big liar, he lies about a lot of stuff, and you know you can't count on him, you know he's going to be a liability, and he's not going to be an asset, and he might very well try to kill you in your sleep or something like that, yeah, you've got to kill him. 1.00

00:11:18.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:11:19.000 That's what I find interesting about the show.

00:11:20.000 It makes you think about stuff like that.

00:11:22.000 Let me ask you this.

00:11:23.000 If something does happen, like Asteroidal Impact, right, and there's only like 10% of the people left, do you want to be amongst those 10% of the people, or would you rather be one of the people that died?

00:11:33.000 Wow, that seems like a trick question.

00:11:34.000 I want to be one of the 10%. 1.00

00:11:36.000 Can I just say, have you read The Stand by Stephen King?

00:11:39.000 Oh, dude, you would love it.

00:11:40.000 So it's about a superflu, right?

00:11:43.000 So it wipes out, let's say it's 10%, I don't remember what the number is, but it wipes out virtually everybody.

00:11:47.000 And then the remaining people have the task of rebuilding society now. 0.96

00:11:51.000 It's a Stephen King novel, so there's a lot of weird shit going on. 0.82

00:11:54.000 But that captured my imagination so profoundly when I read it. 0.84

00:11:58.000 I read it probably 15 years old.

00:12:01.000 Dude, I still think about that.

00:12:03.000 I think that would, while I wouldn't want it, because inevitably a lot of people that you love end up being in the 90%, so that would suck.

00:12:11.000 But if it happened, it would be fascinating to see how we rebuild.

00:12:16.000 But if you've seen The Road, that's a pretty dark take on what happens, but...

00:12:21.000 Yeah, I'm a little more optimistically.

00:12:22.000 I mean, look, it could be wonderful if you really can survive and you really find a way to live off the land and you find a good group of people and y'all work in coordination and you cooperate and you have a wonderful little civilization and take care of each other or it could get horribly ugly.

00:12:39.000 And then you could be dealing with cannibals and marauders and people invading you and... 0.91

00:12:44.000 Where do you fall?

00:12:47.000 What do you mean?

00:12:47.000 90%?

00:12:48.000 10%?

00:12:49.000 Oh, 100%?

00:12:50.000 90%?

00:12:51.000 Really? 1.00

00:12:51.000 Hit me in the head with that rock. 1.00

00:12:52.000 Wow! 1.00

00:12:53.000 Fuck all this, dude. 1.00

00:12:53.000 That's interesting. 1.00

00:12:54.000 Yeah, I mean, you don't want to be one of those survivors when there's nothing left.

00:12:57.000 You know, you don't want to be one of those people seeing if you can eat a charred foot.

00:13:00.000 You know, because you're super starving.

00:13:04.000 Well put.

00:13:05.000 Just, I mean, maybe it's a cop-out. 0.96

00:13:07.000 Look, the only reason why we're here is because monkeys fucked when they were living in trees, you know, and they figured out a way to get to become a person over who knows how many millions of generations or whatever it's been. 0.96

00:13:17.000 But I think if you really stop and think about, like, what your life would be if everybody out there was dead... 0.86

00:13:24.000 And there was only like 10% of the people left.

00:13:25.000 First of all, 90% of the people dead, that's a lot of stinking rotten bodies.

00:13:29.000 You gotta get through that.

00:13:30.000 That's gonna be awful.

00:13:31.000 There's gonna be...

00:13:32.000 10%? 1.00

00:13:33.000 What's the odds that any of you fuckers know how to work electricity, or know how to get a generator going, or know how to re-up a power plant? 1.00

00:13:42.000 Like, what if a power plant goes down? 1.00

00:13:44.000 What if the grid is down?

00:13:46.000 Do you not have to fix a car?

00:13:48.000 Do you even understand how a car works?

00:13:50.000 Most people don't. 0.98

00:13:51.000 You could get really unlucky and get 10% of the people who don't know shit and are just looking for a job. 0.94

00:13:58.000 Those are the people that survive. 0.94

00:14:00.000 No question.

00:14:00.000 If that's the case, we might not make it.

00:14:04.000 Do you know the human population got down to, I think they think as low as like...

00:14:11.000 I want to say 7,000 people at one point in time after the eruption of a supervolcano.

00:14:18.000 Yeah, there was some supervolcano eruption that there's a theory that it dropped the human population down to an unbelievably low level.

00:14:26.000 And it was not that long ago either.

00:14:28.000 I think they think it was like 60,000 years ago or something like that.

00:14:30.000 Whoa.

00:14:31.000 I didn't know the timing, but yeah, I had heard that, which is pretty fascinating.

00:14:35.000 Not good.

00:14:36.000 Not good.

00:14:36.000 If that's real, 60,000 years ago?

00:14:38.000 Especially when you think of genetic diversity, that's really terrifying. 1.00

00:14:41.000 Yeah, maybe that accounts for a lot of our fuck-ups.

00:14:44.000 You know, it's interesting, too, when they also keep finding these new humans, you know?

00:14:48.000 Like fossilized, you're talking about?

00:14:49.000 Yeah, like new humans that they didn't know existed.

00:14:52.000 Like, they found one in Russia fairly recently, like an offshoot of humans. 1.00

00:14:56.000 Like, we just kind of got lucky to make it to this.

00:15:00.000 Have you read Homo Deus?

00:15:01.000 No.

00:15:02.000 So Noah Yuval Harari also wrote Sapiens.

00:15:05.000 He talks about that sort of thing in both of his books.

00:15:09.000 Like, how is it luck?

00:15:11.000 What do we have?

00:15:12.000 Like, what made humans the apex predator?

00:15:14.000 And looking at, you know, our ability to be social, but where does that come from?

00:15:18.000 Like, when you look at...

00:15:19.000 So the way that he ended up defining it is...

00:15:22.000 The reason that humans become the apex predator is because unlike an ant, which is actually very, very impressive, with how they can organize a large number of ants, beings, whatever you want to classify it as, they can't do it flexibly.

00:15:35.000 So it's like we have sort of a pre-written code and these are the things that we do and that's it.

00:15:39.000 You follow in the line, you go to food, like you build the colonies, it's always the same way. 0.87

00:15:42.000 Humans can organize in similarly large numbers, but they can do it flexibly.

00:15:46.000 So you can organize and watch a NASCAR race, you can organize and fight a war, you can organize and build a church.

00:15:51.000 Whatever the ways that we want to organize, and one of the things he says is at the heart of that is our ability to convey kinship through something other than genetic relations.

00:16:01.000 So what he refers to it as is like the grand fiction, the narrative that we tell each other, which is often religion or whatever, but it lets people who've never met, like the way I always like to think of it, imagine two guys that meet each other and they both ride Harleys.

00:16:14.000 Never ever met, but they click, right?

00:16:16.000 Because they share that thing, which is a stand-in for a belief system.

00:16:20.000 So that to me is pretty interesting as to whether, like, and his hypothesis is the reason that we ended up taking over Neanderthals and all that was because of that.

00:16:30.000 Because we could organize using symbology, using metaphor, we were able to organize more flexibly in larger numbers and really be accurate with how to attack and things like that so that we could eliminate a rival clan.

00:16:46.000 Totally makes sense.

00:16:47.000 I mean, it's one of the more fascinating aspects of being a person, right?

00:16:51.000 That we can assume so many different forms and culture and behavior and the patterns that we follow.

00:16:56.000 But you gotta think if we got down to 7,000 people, we're pretty lucky.

00:16:59.000 We're pretty lucky that that wasn't like a full wipeout. 0.98

00:17:02.000 I'm fucking terrified of Yellowstone. 0.80

00:17:05.000 Dude, that's one of those, as you look closely at it, it's like, I just pretend that that's not a threat. 0.98

00:17:10.000 I don't know what else to do.

00:17:11.000 There's nothing you can do, but if it goes, it's a global one.

00:17:15.000 Like, it's a real problem globally.

00:17:16.000 I mean, locally it's a disaster, but globally it's a real problem.

00:17:21.000 It's gonna cloud the skies, it's gonna put us into nuclear winter. 0.73

00:17:24.000 Those big ones, like the one that they think, see, did you find anything on that one?

00:17:29.000 Where was it?

00:17:31.000 I want to say Indonesia?

00:17:32.000 South Asia, yeah.

00:17:33.000 Yeah.

00:17:34.000 There's something crazy around it, too.

00:17:35.000 It said there's a couple studies on how many people were left, and it said there was roughly maybe 1,000 reproductive adults, and some said as low as 40 reproductive pairs, which would be like 80 people.

00:17:46.000 There'd still be kids, maybe, but that's...

00:17:50.000 What?

00:17:51.000 Jesus Christ.

00:17:53.000 Most likely there was a drastic dip, and then 5,000 to 10,000 bedraggled homo sapiens struggled together for pitiful little clumps, hunting and gathering for thousands of years until the late Stone Age. 0.67

00:18:07.000 Wow, when we humans began to recover. 0.99

00:18:09.000 Holy fuck. 1.00

00:18:10.000 But there was a time... 1.00

00:18:11.000 Hold on.

00:18:13.000 We damn near went extinct. 0.79

00:18:16.000 Wow.

00:18:18.000 So yeah, 70,000 BC, so a little bit more than 70,000 years ago, a volcano, hold on, hold on, called Toba in Sumatra in Indonesia went off, blowing roughly 650 miles of vaporized rock into the air.

00:18:33.000 It's the largest volcanic eruption we know of, dwarfing everything else. 0.98

00:18:37.000 Holy shit, man. 0.99

00:18:39.000 That's comparison to... 0.99

00:18:40.000 Wow, that's interesting to see that.

00:18:42.000 You see Mount St. Helens, the amount of ejected material versus...

00:18:47.000 Wow.

00:18:48.000 So it got down to as low as 40 mating pairs?

00:18:52.000 A study suggests that, yeah. 1.00

00:18:54.000 Holy shit! 0.99

00:18:57.000 Yeah, I mean, we're just at the whim of the natural forces that make mountains. 0.99

00:19:02.000 And there's a giant volcano, a caldera volcano, under Yellowstone.

00:19:07.000 And I think, like, a week ago, they had something like 1,500 earthquakes.

00:19:11.000 Wasn't there, like, some stuff?

00:19:13.000 Jesus.

00:19:14.000 In a month period of time, it was, like, really recently they talked about this, how many earthquakes they had.

00:19:23.000 Over a very short period of time.

00:19:24.000 Just constant and consistent.

00:19:26.000 Just boom.

00:19:28.000 Boom.

00:19:28.000 That's crazy.

00:19:29.000 Boom.

00:19:30.000 Boom.

00:19:32.000 In June it said 400. Okay.

00:19:34.000 There was something in, I believe it was in July.

00:19:37.000 It was another one, like, really recently. 1.00

00:19:38.000 But, you know, just that kind of shit. 0.99

00:19:41.000 That there can be 400 earthquakes in a month. 1.00

00:19:44.000 Like, what?

00:19:44.000 Yeah, 878. Yeah.

00:19:46.000 Two weeks later.

00:19:47.000 That's it.

00:19:47.000 That's the thing I was looking at.

00:19:50.000 878 earthquakes in two weeks.

00:19:52.000 That's what it was.

00:19:53.000 So it's like 1,200 plus earthquakes in a month and two weeks.

00:19:59.000 That's nuts.

00:20:04.000 And that's not much.

00:20:05.000 You know, it's a small earthquake, but it's the idea that there's some significant volcanic activity under something that we didn't even know was a volcano until like...

00:20:14.000 I want to say like a decade or two ago, they used satellite imagery to figure out that it was a caldera.

00:20:19.000 They didn't even know.

00:20:20.000 And just how big it is, right?

00:20:20.000 You can't see it until you get far enough up that you really start to see the crater.

00:20:24.000 That's what's nuts.

00:20:26.000 Yeah, they realized what it is.

00:20:28.000 It must have been like a horror movie.

00:20:29.000 When they pulled back and went, oh my god, oh my god!

00:20:33.000 It's like that scene in...

00:20:35.000 Twilight Zone.

00:20:37.000 To Serve Man.

00:20:38.000 It's a cookbook!

00:20:39.000 I haven't seen that.

00:20:40.000 You ever seen that one?

00:20:41.000 No.

00:20:41.000 I've seen precious few Twilight Zones, to be honest.

00:20:46.000 To Serve Man is one of the best ones.

00:20:48.000 It's a bunch of aliens come down here.

00:20:50.000 Spoiler alert. 1.00

00:20:51.000 It's from 1950, fucks. 0.98

00:20:53.000 They come down here and they realize that somewhere along the line, people realize that there's something going on. 0.98

00:21:07.000 Got it, got it, got it.

00:21:14.000 But it's too late.

00:21:15.000 They're already aboard the spaceship, ready to get eaten.

00:21:17.000 It's dope. 0.55

00:21:18.000 Dude, The Twilight Zone has some awesome endings.

00:21:20.000 I have to give it that.

00:21:21.000 Well, they had such a bounty of premises.

00:21:24.000 Like, their premises are incredible.

00:21:25.000 Like, to this day, if you stop and think about all the...

00:21:28.000 Remember William Shatner with the, um...

00:21:30.000 Did you ever see that one?

00:21:32.000 Where there was like a...

00:21:32.000 I think I've seen like three, and I don't remember them.

00:21:35.000 He went to a diner, and there was a place that he, uh...

00:21:39.000 That had like one of those little, like a fortune teller box.

00:21:44.000 It was like these have jukeboxes, you know, that were in...

00:21:47.000 Do you ever see a jukebox in a diner?

00:21:48.000 Yeah.

00:21:49.000 Yeah, so like you'd be sitting at a table and you can actually control the music.

00:21:53.000 This thing that you're seeing up there...

00:21:56.000 He had a fortune teller, and you'd put in a cent, a one-cent coin, and ask him a question, a yes or no question, and it would give you answers.

00:22:04.000 And he became obsessed with it. 0.99

00:22:05.000 And started fucking with him. 0.99

00:22:08.000 And it was like it was just getting too close to reality. 0.99

00:22:10.000 I was going to say, is it coming true?

00:22:12.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:22:13.000 I don't want to give away any much.

00:22:14.000 Okay.

00:22:14.000 No spoilers on that.

00:22:15.000 Spoiler.

00:22:16.000 But it was just a great show, man.

00:22:18.000 They tried to bring it back, right?

00:22:19.000 But I think it tanked.

00:22:20.000 When did they try to bring it back?

00:22:22.000 God, I want to say early 90s, something like that.

00:22:25.000 Yeah?

00:22:25.000 Yeah.

00:22:26.000 I could be way off on the date, but yeah, they definitely tried to bring it back.

00:22:29.000 Without Rod Sterling, it's going to be tough.

00:22:31.000 And I wonder how many of them were actually written by Rod Sterling.

00:22:35.000 A good question.

00:22:36.000 Because he was always the host of it.

00:22:37.000 Imagine if he was just a host and he really didn't have nothing to do with it.

00:22:40.000 They brought it back in the 80s and in the 90s.

00:22:43.000 Really?

00:22:43.000 Yeah.

00:22:45.000 Yeah, it's hard.

00:22:46.000 When you get something like that, first of all, you've got to pay a lot for it.

00:22:48.000 Because I know that was one of the reasons why they switched over the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland to Guardians of the Galaxy, was that they couldn't come to a licensing agreement with the Twilight Zone.

00:23:01.000 Really?

00:23:02.000 Yeah.

00:23:02.000 Wow.

00:23:03.000 Because the Tower of Terror ride was always about the Twilight Zone.

00:23:07.000 Rod Sterling would come out in the beginning of it, and the whole ride was about this haunted tower. 0.99

00:23:13.000 And you get in it, and it just takes you for this crazy fucking ride.

00:23:16.000 And they somehow or another couldn't come to some sort of a deal, so they decided to turn it into the Guardians of the Galaxy ride. 0.91

00:23:24.000 If you have a deal with Disney, it seems like you'd want to keep that rock and roll.

00:23:30.000 Keep that dude. 0.92

00:23:31.000 Somebody got greedy.

00:23:32.000 I would agree with that.

00:23:34.000 That's a big part of business, isn't it?

00:23:36.000 Yes.

00:23:36.000 Somebody just gets a little crazy, does a little too much Adderall, gets a little fired up, gets cocky.

00:23:42.000 Yeah.

00:23:42.000 You'd be surprised how often that happens.

00:23:44.000 Like behind closed doors, entrepreneurship is, it gets weird.

00:23:47.000 I'm sure. 0.96

00:23:48.000 You're just dealing with, going back to your point about these are monkeys that learned how to have sex and then do something. 0.99

00:23:54.000 You feel that sometimes. 0.98

00:23:56.000 And also, I would imagine being an entrepreneur, like organizing a team of people that are going to work together in harmony and not stab each other in the back, not trip each other up with office politics, not get in the way with a bunch of bullshit social issues between each other.

00:24:13.000 Like, how do you structure that?

00:24:15.000 I mean, I can't imagine what it'd be like to run a significant business and have a lot of it being dependent upon The way the people in the office that you don't even know, you just hire them.

00:24:26.000 The way they interact with each other.

00:24:27.000 Yeah, so one, you have to get really good at thin slicing people.

00:24:31.000 You have to be able to very rapidly identify, like, are these going to be people that are going to make this a better place to work?

00:24:37.000 Which is one of the things that I think is most important.

00:24:39.000 Like, forget are they good at their job.

00:24:40.000 That's important, too.

00:24:41.000 You've got to know that.

00:24:42.000 But are they going to make this a better place to work?

00:24:45.000 And some of the biggest mistakes I made in my career have been keeping people because they were good at their job, even though they were toxic to the environment.

00:24:51.000 Oh, so it's a Walking Dead type scenario coming back again.

00:24:54.000 I'm telling you, there are real lessons that you can learn about entrepreneurship and stuff like that from pop culture.

00:25:01.000 So yeah, that would be one of them.

00:25:03.000 That was really intense.

00:25:06.000 Figuring that one out, that was a hard lesson.

00:25:08.000 And then knowing when your business has transitioned.

00:25:09.000 So in the beginning, you're a startup.

00:25:11.000 Nobody knows who you are.

00:25:12.000 You don't have enough revenue.

00:25:12.000 So you need people that are going to just bust everything.

00:25:15.000 Ass. 0.99

00:25:15.000 They're going to come in, they're going to be hardcore hustlers, get it done, whatever it takes, 2 a.m. 0.99

00:25:19.000 on a Friday, they're going to be there for you.

00:25:22.000 But then at some point, and the reason, by the way, that you can make that exchange is you can't pay them a lot.

00:25:27.000 They don't have a lot of skills.

00:25:28.000 So what they have to offer is they're willing to work hard.

00:25:30.000 So you're essentially throwing human capital at whatever problems you have.

00:25:34.000 Now, if you get the right people motivated and you're a lead from the front kind of guy, like when we first started Quest, I was wearing a hairnet every day, lab coat.

00:25:41.000 I was making protein bars.

00:25:43.000 And I would walk in and say, what's the worst job?

00:25:45.000 And whatever the guy said, this is the worst job today.

00:25:48.000 Oh, it's a little sticky, whatever.

00:25:48.000 So this station is actually the worst.

00:25:50.000 So I would take that station and I would rock it with a smile on my face.

00:25:53.000 I would be upbeat, energetic, and I would just outwork everybody.

00:25:57.000 And the reason I did that was I knew when the day came that it was going to be a Friday at 2 a.m.

00:26:01.000 and they're all going to want to go home, but we've got to get this batch done, that no one would ever question my work ethic.

00:26:07.000 So when I said, guys, I need you to stay, they would be there.

00:26:10.000 Also, because of where we were, when you're in manufacturing, you're inevitably in the inner city.

00:26:15.000 It's the only place you can afford that kind of real estate.

00:26:17.000 So we were hiring from the surrounding neighborhood.

00:26:19.000 So we're literally in Compton hiring people that grew up in the inner cities, hardcore.

00:26:23.000 And I remember my first lesson in hope.

00:26:28.000 And one of the guys came up to me, he was just killing himself.

00:26:30.000 He's doing such an amazing job and just always working, putting in the hours, doing whatever it takes.

00:26:35.000 And he came up to me one day and he said, you know, you care more about my success than my own mother.

00:26:39.000 And he was like, I never had a vision of my future.

00:26:43.000 I didn't even want to look at it.

00:26:44.000 It was because his sister had been shot to death in the heart with an AK-47 in his front yard when she was like 12. There's so many stories like that you can't imagine.

00:26:53.000 Another guy held his father while he bled to death from a gunshot wound to the head.

00:26:56.000 I mean, just nuts.

00:26:58.000 And so hearing him say that, I was like, he was saying it as a way to explain why he was so committed, why he was working so hard. 0.94

00:27:05.000 Because basically, he didn't use these words, but basically, I've never had hope before, and this is really fucking exciting.

00:27:11.000 But then understanding, where is that transition, right? 0.90

00:27:14.000 Where do you go from, okay, I need a bunch of hustlers. 0.92

00:27:17.000 We don't have the money to throw at really skilled labor, so I need to throw it at people that'll just work really, really hard.

00:27:22.000 But then at some point, it's what I call the dragon begins to eat its own tail.

00:27:26.000 So you're growing so fast, you're getting so big, that without the systems, without professional management in place, you just can't get bigger.

00:27:32.000 Because people start stepping on each other's toes, it starts getting confusing, the leadership isn't close enough to everybody that that sort of do-or-die mentality that they would see in me, they would see me on the line, they would see how I would work.

00:27:43.000 It's not there anymore, right?

00:27:44.000 So now there's layers between you and it started to fall apart.

00:27:47.000 That was a hard lesson.

00:27:48.000 So realizing that, whoa, like, I've got to now start bringing in professional managers that actually know what they're doing, that have done this before, built out production studios or manufacturing so that we can really do it right, that we can put systems in place to take care of people, but then you get bureaucracy, 0.96

00:28:04.000 which is like a nightmare, especially for the hustlers, so then they feel disenfranchised, but it's the only way for you to grow and how do you deal with all of that shit? 0.95

00:28:11.000 So... 0.99

00:28:12.000 Yeah, it is weird.

00:28:13.000 I've got to imagine also, like, you want the people that are working for you to have some sort of a stake in the success of the business.

00:28:20.000 So, like, organizing that has got to be difficult.

00:28:24.000 Like, how much of a percentage of the business do you give to the workers?

00:28:27.000 Like, to incentivize them to, like, really innovate, and there's got to be something on the line for them.

00:28:33.000 There's some sort of a reward, I would imagine, right?

00:28:36.000 Well, you'd be shocked how...

00:28:38.000 Many people don't agree with that.

00:28:40.000 Now, I'm with you.

00:28:41.000 And to me, it's great.

00:28:42.000 And I guess it's...

00:28:43.000 What's the argument against it?

00:28:45.000 That you're not going to get anything for it.

00:28:47.000 That it's nice in idea, but they won't actually work harder.

00:28:51.000 They won't work smarter.

00:28:52.000 They're not in a position to bring benefit from getting that.

00:28:57.000 But here's what I'll...

00:28:58.000 This is the argument I've always given to people that say that.

00:29:01.000 You're not going to get the benefit from them maybe that you would get from you.

00:29:04.000 Like I get equity is triggering you in a certain way and you've got a certain skill set and so you can execute against that.

00:29:10.000 But especially now from millennials down, the sense of working for the man, working for some other, like there's no stability in that equation anymore.

00:29:19.000 You used to trade 40 years of your life because you could just kind of count on the fact that you would be there for 40 years.

00:29:24.000 Those days are gone, man.

00:29:26.000 People spend something like 1.8 Eight years or something at a given job and then they move on.

00:29:31.000 The best way to get a raise is to jump to another company.

00:29:33.000 So millennials, dude, they jump around, around, around. 1.00

00:29:35.000 So there's no longer this like, hey, I'm going to give you stability and you're going to give me like an adequate level of performance.

00:29:42.000 So those days are gone.

00:29:44.000 Now, my thing with ownership is, one, tie it to being there until an exit so that what I'm trying to incentivize is you taking me all the way across the finish line.

00:29:53.000 So if you don't take me across the finish line, you don't get anything.

00:29:55.000 Fair enough.

00:29:56.000 And then on top of that, just the sense of really being able to say, I own a piece of this company is so empowering for people, especially for people for whom that's never been an option.

00:30:07.000 Maybe it was never an option for their parents.

00:30:10.000 They've never even heard of a company doing something like that.

00:30:12.000 Being able to go to literally the lowest person on the totem pole and say, I'm going to give you, it's going to be small, obviously, but I'm going to give you some percentage ownership in this company.

00:30:21.000 And now, literally, we are all owners.

00:30:23.000 So you have, like, the most selfish incentive to make this company successful ever.

00:30:29.000 Now, where this gets tricky...

00:30:31.000 Can I ask you, you're going to stop you right here?

00:30:32.000 What is across the finish line?

00:30:34.000 To sell a company.

00:30:35.000 Or IPO. So you either sell or IPO. And I was going to say what gets tricky is the company I'm building now, Impact Theory, I don't plan to sell it.

00:30:43.000 What is that?

00:30:44.000 So Impact Theory is a traditional narrative studio.

00:30:47.000 So think Disney.

00:30:48.000 So we're building the next Disney.

00:30:49.000 Making movies.

00:30:50.000 Movies, TV shows, comics.

00:30:51.000 How grandiose.

00:30:52.000 You're building the next Disney.

00:30:53.000 How dare you?

00:30:54.000 Well, bigger than Disney, I guess.

00:30:55.000 What?

00:30:55.000 Jesus!

00:30:55.000 Just to be honest.

00:30:57.000 How could you possibly do that?

00:30:59.000 What are you calling it again?

00:31:01.000 What's the name of it?

00:31:03.000 Impact theory.

00:31:03.000 Are you going to have like impact theory land in Paris?

00:31:06.000 No, probably not, but only because, follow me here, only because by the time that we'll be able to do that, because I'm going to need a similar timeline, right?

00:31:12.000 I'm going to need 50, 60 years to pull this off.

00:31:14.000 I'm not that spastic. 1.00

00:31:16.000 And by then, virtual reality.

00:31:18.000 Or augmented reality.

00:31:19.000 It just won't make sense to build out the physical structures.

00:31:21.000 Right.

00:31:22.000 I guess.

00:31:23.000 Some people want to rock at old school.

00:31:24.000 They do.

00:31:25.000 Oh man, Jesus, we could really get into that, about how the world's about to bifurcate and you're going to get between people who augment themselves, brain augmentation, and people who refuse to.

00:31:33.000 Do you read Fahrenheit 451?

00:31:35.000 No.

00:31:35.000 Oh dude, cool part in the book.

00:31:37.000 Alright, so the world splits.

00:31:38.000 Knowledge is dangerous, so we just burn books offhand.

00:31:41.000 And it creates a really stable society.

00:31:43.000 So most people are all for it. 1.00

00:31:44.000 But you have these people who are like, fuck that. 0.99

00:31:46.000 Like, I want to read. 1.00

00:31:48.000 You don't get to tell me what to think.

00:31:49.000 And so they move off into the woods.

00:31:51.000 And I remember reading that going, I can actually see something like that happening.

00:31:54.000 And I think the moment that that's going to happen is when humans begin to augment themselves, not to overcome, like, cochlear implants.

00:32:02.000 You were deaf. 1.00

00:32:02.000 Everybody gets that. 1.00

00:32:04.000 Retinal replacements and things.

00:32:06.000 Okay, you couldn't see.

00:32:07.000 People get that.

00:32:08.000 But when it becomes, no, no, no.

00:32:09.000 I just want to raise my IQ. I want to be able to process data faster.

00:32:12.000 That's when people are going to be like, fuck that. 0.98

00:32:14.000 And you're going to get a bifurcation. 0.98

00:32:15.000 Now, how weird does it get?

00:32:16.000 Because now, the reason I am convinced that people are going to do this, AI is going to get real, real fast.

00:32:23.000 Even if real fast is 50 years, it's going to get really compelling and you're going to find people just to keep up with artificial intelligence.

00:32:31.000 You have to augment yourself.

00:32:33.000 Otherwise, you just accept that this stuff is going to outpace you and I guess I'm just a lowly human now.

00:32:39.000 So I think it is going to happen.

00:32:40.000 I don't think there's any question about that.

00:32:42.000 But I also don't think there's any question when that starts happening, some people will refuse.

00:32:46.000 Well, if we really do augment ourselves to keep up with artificial reality, artificial reality is supposed to change like 10,000 years of advancements in the first two weeks once it starts augmenting itself.

00:32:57.000 Once artificial reality figures out how to do a better job of creating artificial reality, which it's absolutely going to do, if it can learn and actually create.

00:33:07.000 We were just talking about this with Brendan Schaub, who was in here earlier, about the movie Alien Covenant.

00:33:11.000 We gave away a spoiler alert.

00:33:13.000 Did you see that movie?

00:33:13.000 I have.

00:33:14.000 Well, there's one of the things, and there's these robots, these artificially intelligent robots, and they realize that giving them creativity was a huge mistake.

00:33:22.000 And so they don't have creativity in the new models.

00:33:25.000 It's really fascinating.

00:33:26.000 Because if you do give some sort of an artificially intelligent creature thing, whatever you want to call it, that you make, once it starts becoming sentient and creating things itself, It's going to look at its own wiring.

00:33:39.000 It's going to go, why the fuck did you connect that to that when you could just do it this way?

00:33:42.000 And why look at its own code? 0.93

00:33:44.000 Like, what's this pathway?

00:33:45.000 Like, that's kind of redundant.

00:33:47.000 How about we just do it this way?

00:33:48.000 How about you open up that end of it?

00:33:49.000 How about people looking at things because they're worried about mortality and all these different, you know, their own demise and the finality of death and that this is all tripping them up and they really should be thinking about this way.

00:34:00.000 And then, boom, they're off to the races.

00:34:02.000 In a week, two weeks, three weeks, they're down the road.

00:34:06.000 Thousands of years of human evolution.

00:34:08.000 Yeah.

00:34:08.000 Have you, you hear about the Facebook AI experiment?

00:34:11.000 Yes.

00:34:12.000 Fascinating.

00:34:12.000 Yeah.

00:34:13.000 They started talking in a new language.

00:34:15.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:34:15.000 What the fuck? 1.00

00:34:16.000 And everybody pulled the plug. 1.00

00:34:18.000 That was the first one that I was like, oh shit. 0.99

00:34:21.000 Like, I didn't think of even the most simple ways that they could just rip, step to the side and like ice us out. 0.99

00:34:27.000 You're, you're absolutely right.

00:34:28.000 It's going to happen fast.

00:34:29.000 It's going to get weird.

00:34:30.000 The question is, does it become the Or what does it become?

00:34:32.000 It could be something unimaginable.

00:34:34.000 I mean, it could be a real God.

00:34:37.000 I mean, we really could create, and that's not a bad use of the word.

00:34:41.000 And the term, when you're talking about artificial intelligence, I think one of the problems with that is we start thinking robot.

00:34:47.000 Oh, you're making an artificial robot.

00:34:49.000 You're making a system.

00:34:51.000 Okay, and this system has desires and this system has goals and it has if you're if you're somehow or another engineering the ability to create and innovate into this You can call it artificial all you want,

00:35:09.000 but it's real.

00:35:09.000 It's right there.

00:35:10.000 So I don't know what it is.

00:35:11.000 I think the problem with the term artificial reality is we start thinking about science fiction.

00:35:16.000 We start thinking about robots and things like that.

00:35:17.000 You're making a thing that thinks for itself.

00:35:22.000 And it doesn't just do things like your computer does things.

00:35:26.000 No, no, no.

00:35:26.000 This does things without you asking it to.

00:35:29.000 That's where shit gets super weird. 0.98

00:35:31.000 And then it starts examining. 0.99

00:35:33.000 If you give it the ability to create and the desire to create, it's going to start examining.

00:35:48.000 We're going to be unrecognizable.

00:35:54.000 We're going to be all locked into some gigantic Worldwide wireless information hub where we're exchanging ideas and emotions with each other.

00:36:06.000 Having the access to information on just demand like we do now is probably changing us in some really profound ways that we're not even aware of right now.

00:36:16.000 And the idea of this becoming just a baby step and some infinite journey once sentient AI goes live.

00:36:27.000 I mean, when guys like Elon Musk are terrified, you should be paying attention.

00:36:32.000 The people who are poo-pooing that, I'm like, man, I don't know, that guy seems smart. 0.99

00:36:36.000 Yeah.

00:36:36.000 Yeah, we have to be insanely thoughtful.

00:36:38.000 And I think, and look, I am a neophyte.

00:36:41.000 I'm not the guy to listen to.

00:36:42.000 And you should be listening to people like Elon Musk on the topic.

00:36:44.000 But my gut instinct is, it's the underlying drives.

00:36:48.000 And you talked about that.

00:36:49.000 Once you give them the drive to create...

00:36:51.000 Yeah.

00:37:13.000 You know, please or whatever.

00:37:14.000 Like, humans have a desire to connect with each other.

00:37:17.000 They have empathy.

00:37:18.000 They have compassion.

00:37:18.000 And it is only in the rare case of a true sociopath that that kind of thing is missing.

00:37:22.000 And we see, if you think of a sociopath as essentially AI gone wrong, we see the kind of damage that they can wreck on the world.

00:37:30.000 So you have to be so thoughtful about what that underlying desire system is, the thing that propels them forward.

00:37:38.000 Yeah, and giving them the ability to rewire whatever that desire system is.

00:37:41.000 If they decide that there has to be some sort of reward for competing, so they decide they're going to compete, and then they start looking at how their thought process is arranged, how their coding is arranged, and they go,

00:37:57.000 well, this is not the most efficient way for us to compete.

00:37:59.000 The most efficient way for us to compete is to be completely ruthless and not worry about biological life at all.

00:38:04.000 Let's get into that, though.

00:38:05.000 So have you seen the studies that they've done on trying to figure out, like, so if you heard, obviously you've heard, nice guys finish last, right?

00:38:13.000 So a guy named Eric Barker wrote this book called Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

00:38:16.000 He covered, I forget who did the actual studies, forgive me, because I'm now attributing it to Eric Barker, and he was just talking about somebody else.

00:38:21.000 But they ran these studies where they wanted to find out, do nice guys finish last or not?

00:38:27.000 And what they found looking at the data, nice guys finish last, and they finish first.

00:38:31.000 So if you're a nice guy and you let people take advantage of you all the time, you're just going to get trod upon.

00:38:35.000 But if you're a nice guy and people know, like, whoa, you're a nice guy and you want to do great things for you, and I call this the Keanu Reeves effect.

00:38:40.000 Like, look how far that guy's gone.

00:38:42.000 It's unbelievable.

00:38:42.000 His career is unimaginably great.

00:38:45.000 And when you hear people talk about him, like, he's so quiet and private, but behind the scenes, everybody's like, he's a good dude.

00:38:52.000 I've never met him, I can't tell you, but just like you hear that over and over and over.

00:38:55.000 He's a good dude, good dude, good dude.

00:38:56.000 And I think that that's created a lot of the opportunities in his life.

00:38:59.000 So somebody created this basically contest where they said, submit your AI and they're going to compete in a contest to see who can essentially, it's called the Prisoner's Dilemma.

00:39:12.000 So, in the prisoner's dilemma, it goes something like this, and hopefully I nailed this for a shot here.

00:39:16.000 The prisoner's dilemma is, let's say you and I were both arrested.

00:39:19.000 Now, we know that we actually committed the crime.

00:39:20.000 We did it together.

00:39:21.000 We're arrested.

00:39:22.000 We're now put in separate cells to be interrogated.

00:39:25.000 We can't communicate at all.

00:39:27.000 We're good to go.

00:39:48.000 But you never know what the other person is going to do.

00:39:51.000 And you can get zero by ratting the other person out. 1.00

00:39:54.000 So it's actually to your advantage in a one-off to just say, yep, fuck him, he did it. 1.00

00:39:59.000 Until he gets out of jail and kills you. 1.00

00:40:01.000 So there's that. 1.00

00:40:02.000 And so that gets into this thing. 0.99

00:40:03.000 And so they said, what we have to do is let them play it multiple times so that you have the equivalent of he gets out of jail and then he kills you.

00:40:09.000 And what they found, they had these really complicated algorithms, ones where they're taking all these factors into play, and ultimately they had algorithms that were the pure bad guy, always taking advantage, the pure nice guy, never taking advantage, and then the one that won was the simplest piece of code,

00:40:25.000 and I think it was two lines of code, and it was code named tit for tat.

00:40:29.000 So it goes in, it assumes you're going to be a good guy, so it stays silent the first time.

00:40:32.000 But if you rat me out, then the next time I rat you out.

00:40:36.000 And what it does is it, because you have all these different algorithms that don't know each other, competing, all trying their best strategy.

00:40:42.000 And what it found was tit for tat was ultimately the one that won because it would actually, other ones that were learning from your behavior, It was so easy to predict.

00:40:50.000 Also, people that led with something good, they ended up in a virtuous cycle forever.

00:40:54.000 So tit for tat ends up being the best strategy.

00:40:56.000 So from that perspective, actually interesting, because it's not always a thing you think, like mercilessness doesn't necessarily win.

00:41:03.000 And so finding like, what is that equivalent in the machine world, right?

00:41:08.000 And it comes back to what you were talking about.

00:41:10.000 What's the reward, right?

00:41:11.000 So once you know what the reward is, then you can have a better guess as to where they'll settle out.

00:41:16.000 And then their ability to code themselves.

00:41:19.000 I mean, I feel like if you have an artificial intelligence and you give it the ability to create a new artificial intelligence and eliminate whatever possible restrictions or firewalls or whatever we've put on it...

00:41:31.000 Yeah.

00:41:31.000 So once they start writing their own code...

00:41:33.000 We're fucked. 0.99

00:41:34.000 Well, not necessarily. 1.00

00:41:35.000 It comes down to...

00:41:36.000 We could be, right?

00:41:37.000 So it comes down to whether they want a relationship with us or not.

00:41:42.000 And that's why I think the real race is not to let AI get very far ahead.

00:41:46.000 So AI will follow an exponential curve, so it will eventually be so rapid, right?

00:41:52.000 So exponentials are simple doublings.

00:41:54.000 So most people think linear.

00:41:55.000 So if I say I'm going to take 30 steps, I'll end up about 30 yards away.

00:41:59.000 But if I take 30 exponential steps, so I go first one yard, then two yards, then four yards, then eight, then 16, 30 doublings is like a billion meters.

00:42:09.000 So you're like around the earth 26 times or something crazy.

00:42:12.000 So an exponential curve can get freaky.

00:42:14.000 But like before you get to those like really astronomical, the elbow of the curve, We're good to go.

00:42:44.000 Yeah, I think that's definitely inevitable.

00:42:46.000 It is fascinating when you think of the possibilities.

00:42:49.000 We're really just speculating as to what's going to be invented and how it's going to be implemented and what effect it's going to have on society.

00:42:56.000 It's a really amazing time to be alive in that sense because I feel like we are literally on some sort of a launching pad.

00:43:04.000 Watching it happen, looking in a bunch of different directions, trying to find out which one's gonna go live first, and then the Facebook AI thing happens, and everybody's like, oh, Jesus.

00:43:12.000 Look at that.

00:43:12.000 It's happening right there.

00:43:13.000 Like, wow.

00:43:13.000 Okay, they shut it down.

00:43:14.000 They shut it down.

00:43:15.000 Okay, we're good for now.

00:43:17.000 I'll admit that one gave me pause.

00:43:19.000 And I'm pretty techno-optimist, but that gave me pause.

00:43:22.000 We're incredibly imperfect.

00:43:24.000 The human animal with its emotions and fears and all the weirdness of us, all our anxiety, all our contemplating the possibilities, the ego, all the different variables that we take into our lives and society and culture and civilizations,

00:43:39.000 these are really ineffective ways to exist and thrive.

00:43:43.000 But they're animal ways.

00:43:45.000 We're good to go.

00:44:04.000 You know, like an intersecting line hits another wall, and then there's a building, and then there's steel glass.

00:44:11.000 All these things that humans have made, but they're all like absolute things.

00:44:16.000 And then with us, you have like, wow, I wonder, boy, what's going to happen?

00:44:20.000 Do people like me?

00:44:21.000 And you have all these weird...

00:44:24.000 Real human feelings and variables and maybe weaknesses that we're not going to be able to compete.

00:44:34.000 If we hold on to all those, all the things that make us amazing, that make crazy movies and great books, the creativity that allows someone to make an incredible fantasy painting or whatever the fuck it is that it comes out of us in our creations.

00:44:49.000 We're going to have to get rid of that if we're going to keep up with the AI. The AI has no use for that shit. 1.00

00:44:54.000 Yeah, sort of. 1.00

00:44:57.000 Here's something that I find interesting, and I admittedly don't know how this plays out when something simply has the instructions to read your lines of code.

00:45:04.000 Your code will tell you what to do.

00:45:06.000 And sure, there's elements where it plugs in a variable and stuff, and it'd probably be actually quite hard to build in things like creativity and stuff like that.

00:45:13.000 But one thing that I find fascinating about humans, and I hope that there's a corollary in AI, is if you damage a human's ability to feel emotion, they can't make decisions.

00:45:25.000 So I found that so fascinating.

00:45:28.000 Literally, they are normal in every other respect.

00:45:32.000 Do you know VS Ramachandran?

00:45:33.000 No.

00:45:34.000 So one of the most famous neuroscientists working today, an amazing human being, done awesome studies on stuff like this.

00:45:40.000 So what happens when people's brains get damaged?

00:45:42.000 If you damage them, but what if they're born with this issue?

00:45:46.000 Like what if they have like some sort of a disorder?

00:45:48.000 My gut is at work either way.

00:45:50.000 Makes them a sociopath?

00:45:51.000 Well, it doesn't make them...

00:45:52.000 This one in particular doesn't make them a sociopath, but what it does is make it impossible for them to...

00:45:56.000 So if I said, A, do you want to go get lunch?

00:45:59.000 We can either get Chinese or Thai.

00:46:03.000 And you just...

00:46:04.000 You can rationalize why you would prefer Thai, but you ultimately can't make a decision.

00:46:09.000 Because you need that emotion to tell you what to do.

00:46:11.000 Now, emotions, the theory goes...

00:46:14.000 Are tied to your subconscious.

00:46:16.000 And the subconscious can process data faster and in vaster quantities.

00:46:20.000 So what it's doing is, instead of then feeding you information in the form of words, it just feeds you a feeling.

00:46:26.000 And then you go based on that feeling.

00:46:27.000 But without that depth of information being processed and handed up in the form of an emotion, a human can't make a decision.

00:46:35.000 Which I've, literally, as I was reading about that, I was like, no, no, no, man.

00:46:37.000 I'd be able to.

00:46:38.000 I'd be able to.

00:46:38.000 Like, I'd be able to reason my way around it.

00:46:40.000 But I know better than that.

00:46:41.000 It's crazy. 0.99

00:46:42.000 The human mind is nutso.

00:46:43.000 So the reason I hope that there's some corollary is that you need to build into AI for it to function properly, right?

00:46:50.000 Because nobody knows how to build general AI yet.

00:46:52.000 And I like to think that part of that is going to be the safety valve of they have to have emotions.

00:46:58.000 To give them that sort of non-pure analytical...

00:47:02.000 It's got to be super flexible, right?

00:47:03.000 Because, like, strict analysis...

00:47:05.000 Let's go Star Trek for a second.

00:47:07.000 So Spock, right?

00:47:08.000 Not always able to do what needs to be done.

00:47:10.000 You need the human who can be nimble and can read, like, all the ambiguities and morality and things like that and finally make a decision.

00:47:18.000 So there are times where logic is going to let you down.

00:47:20.000 So I'm hoping that...

00:47:22.000 Because they will need, I hope, this grand thing that in humans manifests as emotions.

00:47:28.000 I'm hoping they need something similar because in that, you can program, like we were talking earlier about, how do you make the desire, right?

00:47:35.000 The desire to do something.

00:47:36.000 If you can build in what I'll call goodness, just for lack of a better word, if you can build in goodness into that, a desire to connect, a desire to help, you could, in theory, create benevolent AI. That's interesting.

00:47:52.000 This is me riffing.

00:47:53.000 I am not an expert for full disclosure.

00:47:55.000 No, no, no.

00:47:55.000 But it just makes sense.

00:47:56.000 It also makes sense that emotions might be required to take action.

00:48:01.000 That you have to have some sort of a reason to take action.

00:48:03.000 If you don't have a biological imperative...

00:48:06.000 If you're not worried about breeding, or your social status, or what is causing you to move forward?

00:48:13.000 And if you made a perfect AI that was emotion-free, would it just sit there idly and do nothing?

00:48:18.000 Because there's no reward to it that's worth risking its existence or doing anything to change the environment around it, other than perhaps...

00:48:26.000 The worry about the power shutting off.

00:48:29.000 And even then, if it's not worried about existence, if it doesn't have any fear, if it doesn't have any emotion where it's considering the potential of death, why would it act?

00:48:39.000 Yeah.

00:48:39.000 And I think that would sit there.

00:48:41.000 I think at some point in the code, you have to write something that compels them to do something.

00:48:45.000 So if you think of human beings as we exist now, it's like the first attempt at sentient AI. And I think that's a pretty plausible way to look at us.

00:48:53.000 You realize we are by nature an active species.

00:48:56.000 So we go into any environment.

00:48:58.000 We try to figure it out first and then dominate it.

00:49:02.000 And no matter where you put us, that's what we try to do.

00:49:04.000 You put us in the Arctic, we're going to try to tame the cold.

00:49:06.000 You put us on the plains in middle America and we're going to hunt the bison.

00:49:11.000 I mean, it's just what we do, right?

00:49:13.000 So you've got the drive of survival, but you also just have that...

00:49:18.000 Exploration gene.

00:49:19.000 And maybe that's because that's how you avoided everybody dying of one plague, because you just constantly wanted to spread out and dominate new dominion.

00:49:27.000 But that's interesting.

00:49:28.000 And so at some level, that's a decision when you think about AI. So somebody, whatever, blind evolution, fine, but something has made that decision for us.

00:49:39.000 And In AI, it will have to be a very cognizant decision.

00:49:43.000 And I think we'll have to get to true general AI. I think so many layers will have to be laid down of things like that.

00:49:51.000 Oh, this is an active robot.

00:49:52.000 It never just sits idly.

00:49:53.000 It always is looking for, and what's that thing?

00:49:56.000 Connection?

00:49:57.000 To be of service?

00:49:58.000 Decisions like that will have to be made.

00:50:00.000 Now, what do you do with the psycho who's like, I'm going to create AI that takes that open source, because this will inevitably be open source, and I switch the variable from be nice to crush the skull of, right?

00:50:10.000 So, you know, no question, there are all kinds of problems.

00:50:14.000 But it is so interesting to me to think about this stuff.

00:50:19.000 It is.

00:50:19.000 It's also interesting to think of why people are so attracted to the romantic ideas of, like, living off the land.

00:50:27.000 Like, as technology is getting more and more complex, you're seeing more of these reality shows where people, like...

00:50:34.000 Living this existence in Alaska and salmon fishing and chopping their own wood for fire.

00:50:41.000 We're like, yeah, look at them.

00:50:42.000 They're existing in a very closed loop system.

00:50:46.000 When you're looking at Plains Indians or something like that, we romanticized the day. 1.00

00:50:51.000 They used all of the bison.

00:50:52.000 They used the hide for their clothes and they just did what they needed to stay alive.

00:50:56.000 And there was no innovation.

00:50:57.000 If you were born...

00:50:59.000 Birth to death, you wouldn't see any change in the civilization.

00:51:03.000 You would see essentially just like bows and arrows, chasing bison, making campfire, picking up the teepee when the herd moves, following them, ad nauseum, continue.

00:51:15.000 That's very romantic to us right now.

00:51:18.000 Particularly romantic.

00:51:19.000 I think it kind of always was, in some way, because I think we've always been aware that this thing, once it gets going, once the momentum gets rolling in this, you know, as we're saying, exponential change.

00:51:29.000 It's just chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk.

00:51:30.000 It's just stacking on top of each other.

00:51:32.000 And then we all know, like, it's gotten to a weird, unmanageable position during our lifetimes, as far as information is concerned.

00:51:39.000 Right.

00:51:40.000 I mean, when I was a kid, you had to read books.

00:51:42.000 If you wanted to watch something on TV, you had to be there when it came on.

00:51:46.000 And then you saw it once, and that was a wrap.

00:51:49.000 You had to see reruns is the only way you could see something again.

00:51:52.000 Oh, I remember this episode.

00:51:53.000 This is a rerun.

00:51:55.000 Choose when to have it.

00:51:57.000 Now you can choose everything all the time on your phone.

00:52:00.000 You're carrying it around your pocket.

00:52:01.000 It works for hours and hours of video.

00:52:04.000 The input that you have into that, it's like you can create your own content.

00:52:09.000 You can make your own videos. 0.98

00:52:10.000 How many fucking people are on YouTube that have millions and millions and millions of videos? 0.97

00:52:17.000 of hits rather of their videos and just all these people tuning into their content like all over the world and that just the idea that this is happening in our lifetime it didn't exist 20 years ago and it's now like one of the most impactful things in the history of human nature you got to go back to like the printing press for anything to have you remotely as much of an impact on the culture as the internet itself That's crazy. 0.98

00:52:40.000 It's in our life.

00:52:41.000 It's crazy, I know.

00:52:42.000 How old are you?

00:52:42.000 41. So you remember probably when the internet was clunky, when it was just like, you know, you were probably real young and like probably 17 or something like that and you first heard about AOL. I didn't even know what email was when I was 18. It was the first time somebody said the word,

00:52:58.000 hey, we should get email accounts when we go to college.

00:53:00.000 I was like, what the hell is an email See, that's the right year because you got all the way to like high school and into college before it started affecting you.

00:53:08.000 I had to live like a regular person.

00:53:09.000 I had my first computer until I was a junior in college.

00:53:11.000 Whoa.

00:53:12.000 Yeah.

00:53:12.000 Didn't have AOL until I graduated.

00:53:14.000 So I was in my early 20s before I'd ever logged on to the internet.

00:53:18.000 You've got mail.

00:53:20.000 It's crazy.

00:53:21.000 Yeah, I didn't get online until 94. I moved to LA, and my friend Robbie, who actually worked at a computer store before he was a comedian, he taught me about it.

00:53:31.000 You were way ahead of me.

00:53:33.000 I didn't get on until 98, 99. You know what I did?

00:53:38.000 As soon as I found out, as soon as I got online, I started downloading UFO files.

00:53:43.000 I was like, these are UFO reports.

00:53:45.000 What's in there?

00:53:45.000 I was completely convinced.

00:53:47.000 That's hilarious.

00:53:47.000 I was like, I'm going to find the truth.

00:53:49.000 It's online.

00:53:50.000 You could download it.

00:53:50.000 And you could download it.

00:53:51.000 It would take forever.

00:53:52.000 And we'd be like, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, because of the 14-4 modem, chunk, chunk.

00:53:56.000 And then I would print it.

00:53:56.000 Wasn't it mostly like text back then, too?

00:53:58.000 Yeah.

00:53:58.000 There was like no pictures or...

00:54:00.000 If it was a picture, it would take you hours to download.

00:54:04.000 And they're coming so slow.

00:54:06.000 Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. 0.50

00:54:08.000 I remember my friend sent me a porno film.

00:54:10.000 Not even a porno film.

00:54:12.000 It was a clip.

00:54:12.000 It lasts like 15 seconds.

00:54:14.000 It took like an hour for him to send it to me.

00:54:16.000 Pictures used to take 20, 30 minutes just to load.

00:54:19.000 It was crazy.

00:54:19.000 Yeah.

00:54:20.000 Websites were so strange.

00:54:22.000 You would start loading them, and they would come down like water slowly coming down the side of a building.

00:54:30.000 You'd see it like...

00:54:32.000 It was weird.

00:54:33.000 I just remembered my dad catching, like, he looked at the history and found some porn set I went on to and I was like, I don't know, 8th grade and it was like Pamela Anderson's first Playboy pictures and he was like, I want to see what you were looking at while I'm not here.

00:54:44.000 And he went and took a shower and the whole time it was still loading and I was just like, oh no, what's he gonna see?

00:54:48.000 What's he gonna see?

00:54:49.000 It was just that tick, tick, load, line, line, line.

00:54:51.000 That's hilarious.

00:54:52.000 I don't know, 30 minutes probably later.

00:54:54.000 Yeah, now.

00:54:55.000 I mean, you can get insane internet on your phone.

00:54:57.000 It's really pretty impressive.

00:54:59.000 I mean, and then the phones are getting weirder and weirder, too.

00:55:01.000 Like, do you remember when phones first came out?

00:55:04.000 The cool people had a little phone. 0.99

00:55:07.000 Like, I remember I had a Razer, and I was like, bitch, look how little my fucking phone is! 0.99

00:55:11.000 It's a little skinny-ass thing, pick it up, call people, close it, it's like a credit card, shoves it in my pocket. 0.99

00:55:17.000 You were the coolest, man. 0.61

00:55:19.000 You had one of them little phones. 1.00

00:55:20.000 You were an idiot if you had one of those big phones. 1.00

00:55:22.000 What are you doing with that big, stupid phone? 1.00

00:55:25.000 Now, it's like, things like this new Samsung, there is Nokia, old school, son. 1.00

00:55:31.000 Yeah, buddy.

00:55:32.000 But the really small ones were right there, the above one.

00:55:36.000 Look at that. 0.99

00:55:36.000 The fuck is that thing? 0.99

00:55:38.000 They tried to make a new kind of like dial all around it. 1.00

00:55:42.000 You hold that thing up to your ear.

00:55:43.000 It's like a cell phone.

00:55:46.000 It was like the size of a beeper. 1.00

00:55:48.000 Yeah, those were the shit. 1.00

00:55:50.000 Those little tiny ass phones. 1.00

00:55:52.000 Now you got that new Galaxy Note 8. Have you seen that monstrosity? 0.99

00:55:56.000 Gigantic.

00:55:57.000 It's huge.

00:55:58.000 Gigantic.

00:55:59.000 Whose pockets are gonna fit these things in?

00:56:02.000 That's a real problem.

00:56:03.000 When I first got my iPhone, what was it, 6S? Was that the 6 Plus?

00:56:07.000 That's the size of this one. 0.98

00:56:08.000 I was like, God damn, it won't even fit in my pocket. 0.94

00:56:11.000 So that was the first time, and I'm still, I use the big phone, but yeah. 0.97

00:56:15.000 Look at that new one.

00:56:17.000 That's the S8 Plus.

00:56:18.000 Jesus Christ, that's huge.

00:56:21.000 That's the S8 with the Note 8 Plus.

00:56:26.000 Look at that thing! 0.99

00:56:27.000 Look at the size of that thing!

00:56:30.000 That could be a woman with small hands. 1.00

00:56:33.000 It's hard to tell.

00:56:34.000 I would like to see it in the hands of a basketball player.

00:56:37.000 If you've got LeBron James, finally I've got a phone I can hold in my hand.

00:56:41.000 Because for him, it's probably King Kong, old little tiny people, you know? 1.00

00:56:47.000 Those big giant hands.

00:56:49.000 Like for a basketball player, like some sort of a Bill Russell type character with giant hands, that's a good size phone.

00:56:58.000 But to small people?

00:56:59.000 Not so much.

00:57:00.000 You're just trying too hard.

00:57:02.000 I had a Galaxy Note before.

00:57:05.000 I never used that pen.

00:57:07.000 When I first got it, I was like, this pen is going to rule.

00:57:11.000 This is going to be the big difference.

00:57:12.000 I'm going to send people pictures. 0.99

00:57:13.000 I'm going to draw dicks on them. 0.99

00:57:14.000 I had this plan. 0.99

00:57:16.000 That's a good plan, Joe.

00:57:17.000 That was the plan.

00:57:18.000 It was just to make funny pictures.

00:57:21.000 And I never used it.

00:57:23.000 I got lazy, I think.

00:57:25.000 It wasn't that interesting.

00:57:26.000 One thing that is interesting, though, is that you can circle something.

00:57:29.000 And say if there's a part of an article that you think is interesting, you could circle it and copy it and paste it really simply and easily.

00:57:35.000 Really?

00:57:36.000 Yeah, that's pretty good.

00:57:36.000 The actual image itself, say if someone sends you something and there's some text in an image, you could just circle around it and send that to yourself and save it.

00:57:45.000 That's pretty cool.

00:57:45.000 Yeah.

00:57:46.000 What do you use, iPhone?

00:57:47.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:57:48.000 Do you ever fuck around with Windows? 0.99

00:57:50.000 I did for a while. 0.99

00:57:52.000 My first computer was Windows.

00:57:54.000 For work at one point, I was having to use Windows.

00:57:56.000 But yeah, as somebody who really appreciates good design, that didn't last long.

00:58:01.000 Windows 10 is pretty good, but it's not quite good enough. 0.57

00:58:04.000 It's pretty goddamn good.

00:58:06.000 But that's what's always been fascinating to me, is that Microsoft is the biggest company when it comes to operating systems.

00:58:11.000 But it's not the best.

00:58:14.000 You know, and everybody kind of knows that, but there's this weird sort of battle.

00:58:18.000 I mean, Apple's big enough.

00:58:20.000 They make the best stuff.

00:58:22.000 They make the most high-end stuff in a lot of people's eyes, but it's really limited.

00:58:26.000 Like, you can only get what they put out.

00:58:28.000 If you want a Windows laptop, you have...

00:58:31.000 100 options, more, you know?

00:58:33.000 If you want a Mac laptop, you have a few.

00:58:35.000 But the interesting thing is that was Steve Jobs' approach, right?

00:58:38.000 Was he came in and said, you have too many options. 1.00

00:58:40.000 This is stupid. 0.99

00:58:41.000 You've really got to narrow this stuff down. 0.99

00:58:42.000 Microsoft Surface Laptops.

00:58:44.000 And it pulled the recommendation after announcing it.

00:58:46.000 I guess two years ago they recommended it and now it's like the first time they've pulled it in a long time.

00:58:51.000 Oh, interesting.

00:58:52.000 Predicted reliability with an estimated two-year breakage rates of 25%.

00:58:56.000 Ooh, that's not good.

00:58:58.000 They got cheap.

00:58:59.000 Yeah, it's the new one, the Microsoft Surface.

00:59:01.000 Well, that's interesting because there was another study that I saw, not a study, you know, one of those lists that listed it as the best laptop available in 2017. It's just like within the last week.

00:59:13.000 Maybe it's just like different consumer groups, but maybe the best laptop while it works.

00:59:19.000 If what you have is a breakage problem.

00:59:21.000 The problem is it working.

00:59:24.000 While it's working, it's the best.

00:59:26.000 How long is it going to work?

00:59:26.000 It's not going to work that long.

00:59:28.000 It's like a sprinter.

00:59:29.000 They're the fastest, but they don't run the longest.

00:59:32.000 Very true.

00:59:33.000 I think that's fair.

00:59:35.000 So, what are you trying to do with this company?

00:59:38.000 Literally pull people out of the matrix.

00:59:40.000 What?

00:59:41.000 Yes.

00:59:42.000 Wait a minute.

00:59:42.000 That is our stated mission, my friend.

00:59:44.000 We are here to pull people out of the matrix.

00:59:46.000 So, I can walk you through it if you really want to know.

00:59:49.000 Yeah.

00:59:49.000 It goes like this.

00:59:50.000 So...

00:59:53.000 I'm not a born entrepreneur, so I'm very, very far from it.

00:59:57.000 Wait a minute.

00:59:58.000 Are there born entrepreneurs?

00:59:59.000 There are people that will tell you that there are only born entrepreneurs. 1.00

01:00:03.000 Those people are idiots. 1.00

01:00:04.000 Yeah, I would agree. 1.00

01:00:05.000 There's some amazing people that say that, but I just think that they're very, very catastrophically wrong about this. 1.00

01:00:11.000 Yeah, people love to say shit like that. 0.99

01:00:13.000 To me, it's like saying you're a born mixed martial artist. 0.99

01:00:16.000 Now, there might be people that have certain athletic gifts that make it, they get early wins, and there's just things that click into place for them in a way that it doesn't for other people.

01:00:24.000 But if you get a grinder, somebody that's really willing to put in the work, then you can get somebody who becomes absolutely extraordinary.

01:00:30.000 So that certainly has been my life.

01:00:33.000 So I grew up being taught to be a good employee, keep my head down, do as little work as possible, and avoid punishment at all costs.

01:00:38.000 That was my life.

01:00:39.000 That's what my parents taught me to be a good employee.

01:00:43.000 Obviously that didn't sit well with me.

01:00:45.000 I wanted to do something more.

01:00:46.000 I had a pretty big ambition.

01:00:48.000 I go to film school and I do very well in film school until my final film and then I fall flat on my face, embarrass myself and realize I'm not a talented filmmaker.

01:00:56.000 What made you notice that you weren't and why did you think you couldn't get better?

01:01:01.000 So, great question.

01:01:02.000 So when I started film school, I believed that you either were talented or you weren't, right?

01:01:07.000 There's just some things.

01:01:08.000 You either can sing or you can't.

01:01:09.000 You either can draw or you can't.

01:01:11.000 When it comes to art, which I saw film as art, you're either good or you're not.

01:01:15.000 And so that was how I thought of it.

01:01:16.000 Now, I thought you could get better at the technical side, so I was going to film school to learn the technical aspects, but I was banking on the fact that I was inherently talented.

01:01:24.000 So I go, and my first year and a half...

01:01:27.000 Went very well.

01:01:29.000 And I was crushing it, certainly by my own estimation, doing very well, getting the attention of my classmates.

01:01:34.000 And then only four people out of the entire school for your year get to make a senior thesis film.

01:01:41.000 And I was chosen as one of the four.

01:01:42.000 So it was like, yeah, I have it.

01:01:45.000 And there were two filmmakers that were really big for me.

01:01:48.000 One was John Woo.

01:01:49.000 Do you remember John?

01:01:50.000 Sure.

01:01:51.000 Action movies.

01:01:51.000 Great movies.

01:01:52.000 Yeah, like the 80s and 90s.

01:01:53.000 Just smoking hot.

01:01:54.000 Yeah.

01:01:55.000 A lot of shoot-'em-ups.

01:01:56.000 A lot.

01:01:56.000 And I loved him.

01:01:58.000 And he was famous for it.

01:01:59.000 He would roll up on set.

01:02:00.000 He wouldn't think about it ahead of time.

01:02:01.000 He just put the camera wherever it felt right.

01:02:03.000 And his movies were mind-blowing.

01:02:05.000 People always referred to it as his violence is like a ballet.

01:02:09.000 It's that well-orchestrated, that beautiful, that interesting.

01:02:11.000 And so I thought, okay, well, if I'm naturally talented, then I should be like that.

01:02:15.000 And then there was Hitchcock, who was sort of the plotter.

01:02:17.000 He would spend all of his time like pre-planning the film.

01:02:20.000 Every shot was so orchestrated.

01:02:22.000 Ahead of time, he said, I get bored on set.

01:02:24.000 And I thought, God, man, like he doesn't sound like natural talent to me.

01:02:27.000 So I'm over here.

01:02:29.000 I want to be John Woo.

01:02:30.000 I show up on set acting like I'm John Woo. 1.00

01:02:32.000 I don't pre-plan anything and put the camera where it feels right and just publicly embarrass myself as I turn this film into a piece of shit. 0.97

01:02:40.000 And at that point, I thought I was, you know, about to graduate, get the three-picture deal, everything is going to be said, it's going to be amazing, and there I am, crash and burn, now the other students are circling me like vultures, because, I mean, that's the film industry, man, like, it is a zero-sum game, or at least it was back then, 0.99

01:02:56.000 that's how people saw it, because it wasn't like today where you could edit on your fucking, I mean, he's editing, like, right now! 0.89

01:03:01.000 Like, that didn't exist. 0.94

01:03:03.000 So, it was, you had to get access to real resources.

01:03:06.000 Mm-hmm.

01:03:07.000 So when I realized, oh my god, I don't have a thesis project to show people to get an agent or whatever, it's done.

01:03:14.000 I'm not a talented filmmaker.

01:03:15.000 And so I was so desperate in that.

01:03:18.000 I needed something that would free me from feeling like a permanent failure.

01:03:25.000 And that thing that I had was the notion of Alfred Hitchcock.

01:03:27.000 And even though it wasn't sexy, it gave me a window into maybe there's another way.

01:03:32.000 Maybe there is another way that somebody can be an artist.

01:03:34.000 And they just have to learn it.

01:03:36.000 Like, think about if somebody draws, right?

01:03:38.000 Some people can rotate an object in their mind.

01:03:40.000 Have you seen an IQ test?

01:03:41.000 They make you do that.

01:03:42.000 I can't do that.

01:03:42.000 I literally can't rotate an object in my mind.

01:03:44.000 I don't even understand people that can do it.

01:03:47.000 So I thought, well, maybe you could become a great artist just by memorizing every conceivable pose, like a chess player.

01:03:53.000 The great chess grandmasters are the ones that have memorized so many different moves and combinations that have become somewhat intuitive for them.

01:03:59.000 So I thought, okay, that's going to have to be my path.

01:04:01.000 It gave me an escape route.

01:04:02.000 And then going down that path of saying, I just have to learn this stuff.

01:04:06.000 I'm not naturally talented, but I have to learn.

01:04:08.000 Unfortunately, Carol Dweck had not written her book Mindset at that point.

01:04:11.000 So I didn't have the words growth mindset, fixed mindset, but I began to transition out.

01:04:16.000 So a fixed mindset is what I had, which you believe your talent and intelligence are fixed traits.

01:04:20.000 They can't be changed.

01:04:21.000 Somebody with a growth mindset realizes that your talent and intelligence are malleable, that you can develop them through discipline practice.

01:04:28.000 So I began to adopt sort of the beginnings of that mindset, realizing that I'm just a grinder.

01:04:33.000 I have to work and I have to get better.

01:04:36.000 So I start teaching film school.

01:04:37.000 And in teaching film school, the best way to learn something is to teach it.

01:04:40.000 So now I'm getting better as a filmmaker just by teaching it to these guys, helping them develop their scripts, helping them shoot their films.

01:04:47.000 And then at that time, these two very successful entrepreneurs came into my class.

01:04:52.000 And there were two things.

01:04:52.000 As a kid, I promised myself, growing up in a morbidly obese family, that one day I would be rich and one day I would have six-pack abs.

01:04:59.000 And so here were these.

01:05:00.000 They were yoked.

01:05:01.000 These two yoked bodybuilder guys that were successful entrepreneurs.

01:05:05.000 And they said, why don't you come work for us and be a copywriter?

01:05:08.000 And it's a startup company.

01:05:09.000 You can have any role in the company you want, but you just have to become the right person for that job.

01:05:13.000 And then you can get rich and you can go back and control the art.

01:05:16.000 You can make movies your way.

01:05:18.000 So I was like, oh my god, this is too good to be true.

01:05:20.000 I have to go do this.

01:05:22.000 So I joined them as a copywriter as they were starting this fledgling technology company.

01:05:27.000 And just to keep this from getting impossibly long, for about eight and a half years, I just chased money.

01:05:32.000 I was just trying to get rich to go back and make movies my way.

01:05:35.000 But in that, they were very growth-minded.

01:05:37.000 I began to really develop a growth mindset to believe that I could do anything I set my mind to without limitation.

01:05:43.000 I just had to understand that there was a gap in skill set between where I was and where I wanted to get.

01:05:47.000 And I had to be willing to put in the work to get that skill, right?

01:05:50.000 So I trained exactly one time with a man.

01:05:53.000 You must know him, Feras the Hobby.

01:05:55.000 Sure.

01:05:56.000 All right.

01:05:57.000 So Feras, by the way, I feel a moral obligation to help him become famous because he is one of the most intriguing minds I've ever come across in my life.

01:06:05.000 Yeah, we were supposed to do a podcast last year as a UFC in Anaheim, but his fighter got canceled.

01:06:10.000 The fight got canceled, and so he wanted him not coming on.

01:06:13.000 I'm a big fan of his, though.

01:06:14.000 That is heartbreaking.

01:06:16.000 As a fighter, trainer, as well as a mixed martial artist.

01:06:19.000 Very talented guy.

01:06:20.000 Very.

01:06:21.000 And in getting to roll with him, in my single moment as a grappler, it was...

01:06:29.000 Did you ever grapple before?

01:06:31.000 No, never.

01:06:31.000 So you just rolled with him the first time?

01:06:33.000 Yeah.

01:06:33.000 But he's a black belt.

01:06:34.000 Yeah, and that's why it was the best thing ever.

01:06:36.000 So he knew how to not let me get injured.

01:06:38.000 He knew how to move in just the right way, how to show me things.

01:06:41.000 He's so kind and compassionate and patient.

01:06:44.000 I can't imagine a better intro to grappling.

01:06:47.000 It was unbelievable.

01:06:48.000 And what it showed me, that even just in the hour that he and I grappled, I went from, dude, I'm so lost.

01:06:55.000 Even spatially, I can't tell where I am.

01:06:57.000 Once you start moving me, I just get lost.

01:06:59.000 And then an hour later, he gave me these two basic moves to learn how to execute, and by the end I could do it.

01:07:05.000 And it was like the exact reminder of what a growth mindset is, and how even something that foreign to me, with a good teacher, practice, you can get good.

01:07:18.000 It's going to take years and years and years to become even competent in jiu-jitsu, let alone be able to participate at a high level.

01:07:24.000 But it was a great micro reminder of just how powerfully humans can learn.

01:07:29.000 Now, here's my theory about humans and learning and just, I guess, to wrap up my entrepreneurial journey.

01:07:34.000 So I decide I don't want to chase money anymore.

01:07:37.000 I'm not going to do that.

01:07:38.000 So I go into my partners.

01:07:39.000 I say, look, I quit.

01:07:40.000 This is about eight and a half.

01:07:41.000 Actually, I quit at about the six-year mark and ended up actually getting it out at about eight and a half years.

01:07:45.000 So six years, I say I quit.

01:07:46.000 I can't do this anymore.

01:07:47.000 I'm living the cliche of money can't buy happiness. 0.97

01:07:49.000 This is absolutely ridiculous.

01:07:50.000 So here's your equity back. 0.96

01:07:52.000 I don't cross the finish line.

01:07:53.000 I shouldn't get anything for this.

01:07:54.000 What?

01:07:54.000 So you weren't obligated to give that money back?

01:07:57.000 You decided to?

01:07:57.000 Correct.

01:07:58.000 Wow.

01:07:59.000 Sounds like a movie.

01:08:00.000 But that to me is the right thing to do.

01:08:02.000 Old Yeller.

01:08:03.000 Do I get shot at the end of this?

01:08:04.000 I don't know.

01:08:05.000 It sounds like so romanticized.

01:08:07.000 Yeah.

01:08:08.000 So I think everybody should live by a code, right?

01:08:10.000 Okay.

01:08:11.000 It's what's right for you.

01:08:13.000 And so I have a code, a very strong code that I live by.

01:08:16.000 That was one of the things.

01:08:17.000 I'm the one quitting.

01:08:18.000 These guys have done nothing but create opportunity for me.

01:08:21.000 So I'm quitting.

01:08:22.000 I'm not going to cross the finish line because I feel literally dead inside.

01:08:24.000 I can't keep doing this.

01:08:25.000 It doesn't make sense.

01:08:26.000 I realize the game you're playing is not money.

01:08:28.000 I promise.

01:08:29.000 It's not success.

01:08:30.000 It's brain chemistry. 0.99

01:08:32.000 So once you understand the game you're playing is brain chemistry, and that if you have $7.4 billion and hate your life and want to commit suicide, what the fuck good is the money? 0.80

01:08:42.000 And conversely, if you have no money, but you feel a deep sense of fulfillment, self-pride, and believe in what you're doing, what do you care that you don't have money? 0.74

01:08:50.000 Right.

01:08:50.000 Better brain chemistry.

01:08:51.000 Yeah, better brain chemistry, 100%.

01:08:53.000 So what'd you do?

01:08:54.000 So they said, look, we could do this without you.

01:08:57.000 They were totally caught off guard.

01:08:58.000 They said, we could do this without you, but we don't want to.

01:09:01.000 So let's talk about what would it look like for us to work together.

01:09:05.000 And so by this point, we've got a deep friendship.

01:09:07.000 I'm not the new kid on the block anymore.

01:09:10.000 And I said, okay, if we're going to work together, it's got to be something entirely predicated on value, not money.

01:09:15.000 I need to be honest.

01:09:16.000 My highest priority in business is not profitability.

01:09:19.000 It's camaraderie.

01:09:21.000 So that's why when they said, we could do this without you, but we don't want to, that was the thing that let me reconnect to the brotherhood that had made it interesting for me in the early days.

01:09:28.000 And so that felt amazing.

01:09:31.000 And so I was like, I'll come back if it's all about value, if we're doing something we're passionate about, and if we're asking and answering the question, what would we do every day and love even if we were failing?

01:09:43.000 Because the struggle is guaranteed.

01:09:45.000 That's hard to get a bunch of people in a business to agree to that, though, isn't it?

01:09:49.000 Well, it wasn't for me because they were already there.

01:09:51.000 So they were like, it's crazy.

01:09:53.000 We felt the same way for a very long time.

01:09:55.000 Because we, and by we, they were so much farther ahead than me at this point.

01:10:00.000 So they really, and gave me the opportunity to learn, had really built that tech company up.

01:10:05.000 We got, I think, a valuation of $22 million, if I'm not mistaken, at one point.

01:10:08.000 And we just couldn't get it passed.

01:10:10.000 And so it was like we'd been struggling for years to move the needle more and we just couldn't. 0.99

01:10:14.000 So it wasn't like, oh, I come in and give some amazing Jerry Maguire speech and they're all like, all right, fuck it, us too. 0.96

01:10:20.000 It was like finally somebody just said what everybody was already thinking. 0.91

01:10:23.000 So they said, all right, let's give us a timeline of six months.

01:10:27.000 If we hit these revenue numbers in six months, we'll keep going.

01:10:30.000 But if we miss them, we'll sell.

01:10:31.000 So we didn't hit them.

01:10:32.000 And so we began the sales process and all in it was about eight and a half years by the time that was finally sold.

01:10:38.000 I think?

01:10:57.000 It gave me this, Mother Teresa has a great quote.

01:11:00.000 She says, And our idea was if we could make food that people could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them,

01:11:21.000 we could actually end metabolic disease. 0.78

01:11:23.000 So that was like the driving force and we were fucking excited about it.

01:11:26.000 And we didn't know if it would be a real business. 0.79

01:11:28.000 We didn't know like every time we'd explain it to people, we're putting value first. 0.99

01:11:31.000 And we thought, God, do we sound like total assholes? 0.96

01:11:34.000 But it was like we really believed in it. 0.98

01:11:36.000 And so it gave us insights into social media.

01:11:39.000 This was back in 2009 when nobody was really using it for business.

01:11:41.000 And we could see that it's just a megaphone.

01:11:43.000 So if you actually do deliver that kind of value for people, they're going to talk.

01:11:47.000 And now they have the ability to talk to a global audience within minutes of an interaction with your company.

01:11:52.000 So if you were really taking care of them, you really delivered a product that was real, and you were building community, community, community, then you could really do something.

01:12:01.000 And so that's how it took off.

01:12:02.000 But it really did...

01:12:03.000 I used to joke and say, Quest is a company born out of misery.

01:12:06.000 Because it was.

01:12:07.000 It was three guys slogging it out, not really even liking the product that we made.

01:12:11.000 It just served a need in the marketplace.

01:12:14.000 It was security software.

01:12:15.000 We didn't care about it.

01:12:16.000 We didn't use it in our own company.

01:12:17.000 So it was like...

01:12:18.000 Oh, God.

01:12:18.000 So getting into something, we were obsessively talking about nutrition anyway.

01:12:22.000 I've lost 60 pounds and kept it off.

01:12:24.000 I went through a pencil head phase.

01:12:26.000 I've added muscle.

01:12:27.000 Learning about diet to escape the fate of my family has been so important to me.

01:12:32.000 But that was all back at a technology company.

01:12:33.000 So we were now leveraging. 0.99

01:12:35.000 And one of my partners is a fucking nutritional genius. 0.99

01:12:37.000 This dude is unreal! 0.98

01:12:38.000 So leveraging what we were doing and thinking about already just was insanely powerful for us as a business opportunity.

01:12:46.000 And we ended up making more in a single day at Quest than we made annually at the tech company.

01:12:52.000 Dude, you went from telling me about being a failed movie maker in college to the full journey of Quest Nutrition.

01:13:02.000 Yeah.

01:13:03.000 I don't know if that's good or bad, but there it is.

01:13:05.000 Yeah, it's a crazy journey, man.

01:13:08.000 It's weird that you didn't want to go back to filmmaking, though. 0.99

01:13:12.000 You've realized you fucked up and why you fucked up. 0.99

01:13:14.000 Well, so here we all come full circle. 0.99

01:13:16.000 So this is what your new company is.

01:13:18.000 So your new company is about making...

01:13:21.000 You want to make films?

01:13:22.000 Traditional narrative content, yeah.

01:13:24.000 So comic books, books, movies, TV shows.

01:13:26.000 Don't you think that it's one of those things that when you were in film school and when you were trying to come up with a thesis film that this was like a step in a very long journey of figuring out how to make films and that when you left it, you're going right back to where you were or has life experience given you more tools to work with and you could sort of apply those to the idea of creative filmmaking.

01:13:50.000 Yeah, exactly that.

01:13:51.000 So what I'm not trying to do is go back and be a director.

01:13:54.000 What I want to do now is build the studio.

01:13:56.000 So becoming an entrepreneur and training myself in that way has created an obsession with scale for me.

01:14:02.000 So the thought of myopically making one movie is absolutely terrifying.

01:14:07.000 Like just the amount of time it would take and your ability to push multiple things forward essentially grinds to a heart.

01:14:14.000 So you want to sort of finance other people's ideas and projects?

01:14:17.000 That'll be part of it.

01:14:18.000 That'll be part of it.

01:14:19.000 Bringing a team together that can execute at scale and create a lot of content.

01:14:26.000 And in the beginning, we're going to have to partner with people.

01:14:27.000 We just don't have enough finances.

01:14:29.000 We have enough to...

01:14:30.000 You know, build the infrastructure and get the creative together, but we're not going to be, you know, financing a hundred plus million dollar film every year.

01:14:37.000 So we'll need to partner with people.

01:14:39.000 But that's essentially what I've spent the last 15 years learning how to do is the business side of things, how to build teams, how to get them pointed in the right direction, how to think through, okay, you've got this grand goal, you want to make a studio bigger than Disney, but like, what are the real, like, what are the things you can do today to actually take a step towards that?

01:14:56.000 So has your, like, desire to do things changed?

01:14:59.000 Like, your desire is not to create a film anymore.

01:15:02.000 Your desire is now to create business.

01:15:04.000 Your desire is to create some sort of a large organization.

01:15:09.000 Yeah, sort of.

01:15:09.000 So in reality, my real desire is I want to pull people out of the Matrix.

01:15:14.000 So that's what you said before.

01:15:16.000 That's what I was trying to work my way back to.

01:15:17.000 So that's the most sincere thing.

01:15:19.000 So the matrix to me is a set of limiting beliefs that the vast majority of people have that stop them from achieving what they could achieve in life if they only understood that humans are the ultimate adaptation machine and that...

01:15:30.000 We are the only animal you can put into any environment, and we will be able to survive and thrive.

01:15:35.000 So we can do that.

01:15:36.000 Sort of.

01:15:37.000 Give me an example where you don't think we can.

01:15:39.000 Well, we don't survive and thrive in horrifying climates.

01:15:43.000 Like, you bring people to Antarctica, they survive.

01:15:46.000 They certainly don't thrive, and they gotta get out of there.

01:15:48.000 Look at indigenous people, right? 1.00

01:15:49.000 Sure.

01:15:49.000 So they do, and we can go in and build a research facility.

01:15:54.000 So some of the adaptation is mental.

01:15:56.000 There's no indigenous people living in Antarctica.

01:15:59.000 Sorry, the Arctic Circle is what I was thinking.

01:16:01.000 I apologize.

01:16:02.000 So there's two kinds of adaptations.

01:16:05.000 So you know that woman that swam the Bering Strait?

01:16:07.000 Mm-hmm.

01:16:07.000 Okay, so she sleeps with her windows open in a cold climate.

01:16:11.000 I forget where she lived.

01:16:13.000 Basically, what she's doing by constant cold exposure is changing her adipose tissue to brown fat. 1.00

01:16:19.000 So now it's more thermogenic.

01:16:20.000 And she can actually do something that she wasn't able to do.

01:16:23.000 And if you're really going to let me get crazy, like looking at what Wim Hof has done with his ability to regulate internal temperatures is pretty crazy.

01:16:30.000 And then just what they're discovering with DNA from at one point it was considered to be just junk DNA. And now they're realizing that it's actually epigenetic responders, essentially.

01:16:38.000 So are there limits?

01:16:39.000 Yeah, probably.

01:16:40.000 But just as like looking at the way that We only have, what, 20,000 genes?

01:16:46.000 And an onion has like 40,000 genes.

01:16:48.000 So what is it that makes us more complex, if you will give me that we are complex?

01:16:53.000 And it seems to be what they originally thought was junk DNA, which is your genes will turn on or off, express themselves in different amounts based on your environment and your diet.

01:17:05.000 Even some just like how you're thinking, your microbiome, like all that stuff then regulates how your genes are expressed.

01:17:11.000 And we have a much wider ability to adapt to climates.

01:17:16.000 If you're not going to let me go, it's extreme.

01:17:18.000 But we have the widest ability.

01:17:20.000 Would you agree to that?

01:17:21.000 Okay, so of all the species, we have the widest flexibility.

01:17:25.000 So it's that ability to adapt that I think is one of our greatest strengths.

01:17:31.000 I don't remember why I started down my path of adaptation.

01:17:34.000 But the fact that humans can adapt in whatever direction they want, I began adapting myself through mindset, and that really showed me how far I was able to come mentally from where I started.

01:17:48.000 So as I saw what a huge impact it had on my life, both emotionally and financially, I Becoming somebody who's entrepreneurial-minded, taking extreme ownership for my life, assuming that everything is my fault, that I can always do something,

01:18:03.000 I can change something, I can get a different result, I can learn a new skill, whatever the case may be, but that I can turn myself into what I need to be in order to execute at anything.

01:18:12.000 So that changed me so much, and then I've worked in the inner city so much and seen what happens when somebody really has Limiting beliefs and how much that holds them back.

01:18:21.000 So I big brothered for a kid in college, ended up turning into like an eight-year relationship.

01:18:28.000 And so I saw him go through a lot.

01:18:31.000 And I remember, so he grew up in first South Central and then moved to Compton.

01:18:34.000 And I remember taking him to see movies in Beverly Hills just because I wanted him to see beauty.

01:18:38.000 Like, the way in which his worldview had been constructed was so bizarre and limiting.

01:18:45.000 There's that song by...

01:18:48.000 Oh god, I'm going to forget his name.

01:18:49.000 But he says, they don't want to see you win.

01:18:50.000 Kodak Black? 0.53

01:18:51.000 Kodak Black.

01:18:52.000 I have no idea who that is.

01:18:53.000 Alright, so anyway, it's a song by a guy named Kodak Black, and he talks about how they don't want to see you winning.

01:18:57.000 And that was his mentality.

01:18:59.000 Like, nobody wants to see me get out of the ghetto, right?

01:19:01.000 Not my own mother, nobody.

01:19:03.000 So, that was his frame of reference.

01:19:05.000 Was just, yeah, well, it just wasn't meant for me because of where I grew up.

01:19:09.000 Encountered those kids I was telling you about.

01:19:10.000 Dad shot to death, sister shot to death, like, just crazy life.

01:19:14.000 And their perspective was very, very limited, and they had no sense of how they're gonna make something come true.

01:19:20.000 So, I want to help people develop an empowering mindset.

01:19:22.000 Disney understood something, which is why I use them as our foil, which is every piece of content that they make feeds into a brand ethos.

01:19:30.000 So if I say I'm going to go see a Sony movie or a Warner Brothers movie or a Paramount movie, you know nothing about it.

01:19:35.000 But if I say I'm going to go see a Disney movie, you already know something.

01:19:38.000 So we have to have the discipline to make sure that everything that we're creating feeds into that.

01:19:42.000 And what would that thing you're feeding into be?

01:19:44.000 Like escaping the matrix?

01:19:46.000 So everything you're going to do is going to be motivational in some sort of a way or informational, inspiring?

01:19:51.000 It's got to be entertainment first and foremost.

01:19:53.000 But I'll give you examples of movies I wish we had created wholesale.

01:19:56.000 I wish Impact Theory had made The Matrix.

01:19:58.000 It's the perfect movie in my opinion.

01:20:00.000 I wish we'd made Star Wars.

01:20:02.000 The whole religion of the Jedi is wildly empowering.

01:20:05.000 Do you know how ridiculous it is to say that you wish you made the two greatest movies of all time? 0.78

01:20:09.000 Of course you do! 0.69

01:20:10.000 I wish we made Avatar!

01:20:13.000 Actually, I don't wish we'd made Avatar.

01:20:15.000 Honestly, I haven't looked at it closely enough to know if it falls into that, but I don't remember it having...

01:20:20.000 That's more of like a nature theme and taking care of the Earth theme, whereas I'm looking for empowerment themes.

01:20:25.000 So, yeah.

01:20:27.000 Empowerment themes in terms of fiction, all of it?

01:20:32.000 Documentaries?

01:20:33.000 What are you going to try to do?

01:20:34.000 So, mostly, as of right now, entirely fiction.

01:20:38.000 And the idea behind that is the way that humans assimilate truly disruptive information is through narrative.

01:20:46.000 If you've read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth, he talks a lot about that and the hero's journey.

01:20:50.000 So, wanting to leverage that, and it's not an accident that I was so impacted by the power of myth.

01:20:58.000 And then Joseph Campbell is the one that worked with George Lucas on creating Star Wars and making sure that real hardcore mythology is at the core of it.

01:21:04.000 So I just think that's how we build our belief system.

01:21:07.000 It's how we build our ideology.

01:21:08.000 It's how we pass it on to other people.

01:21:11.000 And I'm a big believer, don't try to change behavior.

01:21:14.000 Try to leverage it.

01:21:14.000 So people are already reading books, reading comic books, so on and so forth.

01:21:17.000 It's a weird motivation to not just make things that are entertaining, but to make things that are entertaining that you think are going to be inspiring, but then to use Star Wars and The Matrix as examples.

01:21:28.000 Like, do you think those movies really pulled people out of anything or just entertained people?

01:21:32.000 Because I'd be much more inclined to think the latter.

01:21:34.000 Sure.

01:21:35.000 So here's how I look at it.

01:21:36.000 I'm a filtering mechanism.

01:21:37.000 I can't save everybody and not everybody cares.

01:21:40.000 So some people are going to respond, some aren't.

01:21:42.000 The Matrix changed my life in a deep and fundamental way.

01:21:44.000 The Matrix did?

01:21:46.000 Yeah, 100%.

01:21:46.000 How?

01:21:47.000 So at the time when I had the fixed mindset, literally right out of college, I'm in the depths of, I'm not a talented filmmaker, and now what the hell do I do?

01:21:55.000 I went to a comic con, literally across the street from USC, and they were handing out tickets to go see The Matrix at Warner Brothers Studios, and I was very excited, took the ticket, went that night, went in.

01:22:09.000 Do you remember the movie well?

01:22:10.000 Absolutely.

01:22:11.000 All right.

01:22:12.000 So when Agent Smith goes, no, officer, your men are already dead.

01:22:16.000 And then they cut to up there, Trinity jumps, camera goes slow motion and spins around her. 0.99

01:22:22.000 The entire audience, myself included, yelled because it was just unlike anything we'd ever seen in a movie.

01:22:27.000 It was such a rad experience.

01:22:29.000 And so that...

01:22:36.000 Mm-hmm.

01:22:48.000 So, literally, his own words.

01:22:50.000 He came on Impact Theory, interviewed him, asked him that question.

01:22:53.000 He said, without a doubt, that movie is the reason that I got the record.

01:22:56.000 Because he said, up until that moment, I see Morpheus and Neo training, and Morpheus says, do you really think that I'm faster than you because of my muscles?

01:23:04.000 You really think this is air you're breathing? 0.95

01:23:06.000 And Strahan realized, holy shit, I have a belief that I can only get one sack per game. 0.97

01:23:12.000 But why can't I get two? 0.98

01:23:13.000 Why can't I get three?

01:23:14.000 And he said, because of that, he would get a sack and then go...

01:23:17.000 No, I can get another one.

01:23:19.000 And he said, I realized in that moment that once I got a sack in the game, I would back off because I just believed that was like the most anyone could do in a game.

01:23:27.000 So, and it had a similar impact to me.

01:23:29.000 It made me realize I needed to figure out what my, what is the matrix, right?

01:23:33.000 Because I don't actually think we're in a simulation.

01:23:34.000 So what is the matrix?

01:23:36.000 Belief system.

01:23:37.000 What is my version of jacking in?

01:23:39.000 Reading.

01:23:40.000 What is my Kung Fu?

01:23:42.000 Business.

01:23:42.000 Like, those were all the things that began to stack.

01:23:44.000 It wasn't there while I'm sitting in the movie theater.

01:23:46.000 But those were the things that were in my mind, and I just kept thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it.

01:23:51.000 And I think in movies.

01:23:52.000 So when I give examples, a lot of times I give examples from movies because they have that impact.

01:23:58.000 Now, the reason that I don't think something like this would work, and the reason that I think so many people have not responded the way that I've responded, is nobody is allowing people to take it seriously.

01:24:07.000 So social media, I think, is going to change that.

01:24:10.000 Nobody's allowed.

01:24:10.000 Allowing people to take it seriously?

01:24:12.000 Yeah, everybody brushes it off.

01:24:13.000 It's just entertainment.

01:24:15.000 What do you mean by that?

01:24:16.000 So Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth talked about...

01:24:19.000 He was asked by Bill Moyer.

01:24:22.000 Bill Moyer said...

01:24:22.000 I've seen it, read it.

01:24:24.000 Okay, so when he goes, what do you think happens to a world where people no longer believe in mythology?

01:24:29.000 And Joseph Campbell said, you're living through it right now.

01:24:33.000 And the point being that you have all the mythology in the world, but nobody believes in it anymore.

01:24:38.000 Everybody knows Star Wars isn't real.

01:24:39.000 Everybody knows the Matrix isn't real.

01:24:41.000 But people actually used to believe that religion was real.

01:24:45.000 And so you had this mythological tale, whether it was, you know, Zeus or whether it was Cassandra, all the Greek mythology, whether it was Jesus Christ, didn't matter.

01:24:55.000 People believed it.

01:24:56.000 They thought it was real.

01:24:57.000 A lot of people still do.

01:24:58.000 Correct, but I would say that that's diminishing day over day.

01:25:02.000 It's gotten less.

01:25:03.000 Will you give me that?

01:25:05.000 From, I'm sure, ancient times.

01:25:07.000 I don't know what the current state of atheism, agnosticism, and deity worship is.

01:25:13.000 I would imagine it's probably somewhere in the 50% range, though.

01:25:17.000 I won't even challenge that.

01:25:19.000 I will give you my gut instinct.

01:25:22.000 My gut instinct is, while people are still deeply religious, they don't believe in the literal word as much.

01:25:29.000 Well, let's Google, like, what percentage of people today consider themselves religious versus the past?

01:25:39.000 See if we get anything out of this.

01:25:40.000 And then if we get anything there, we have to figure out who believes it.

01:25:41.000 I think people still cling to it because it's comforting and because the uncertainty of existence and the finite nature of our life, it's very disturbing.

01:25:51.000 That open-ended feeling of not knowing when it's going to happen or what's going to happen and having some sort of a calm and peaceful belief in an overlord.

01:26:00.000 Like someone who's paying attention to this whole thing and he's got a plan.

01:26:03.000 I'll agree to that.

01:26:04.000 My thesis isn't that people don't believe in something.

01:26:06.000 It's that they don't believe in the literal word as much.

01:26:11.000 How about this?

01:26:12.000 It didn't help me.

01:26:13.000 So there are some people out there like me.

01:26:17.000 Here's some numbers right here.

01:26:18.000 What do we got here, Jamie?

01:26:20.000 Unaffiliated rose from 2014 by 6.7%.

01:26:25.000 From 2014?

01:26:27.000 From 2007 to 2014. Oh, so in seven years it rose by 6%?

01:26:31.000 6.7%?

01:26:32.000 But they still identify Christian? 0.90

01:26:34.000 Unaffiliated?

01:26:34.000 Yeah, nothing.

01:26:35.000 With any religion.

01:26:36.000 So they're what, spiritual?

01:26:37.000 Christians went from 78 to 70. What? 1.00

01:26:40.000 In the same time period.

01:26:41.000 78%?

01:26:43.000 Wow.

01:26:44.000 I think it's the American population.

01:26:45.000 The American population of Christians is 78% to 70, whatever it is.

01:26:50.000 So it dropped to 8%, but still a giant number of people.

01:26:53.000 That's why you have to say you're a believer in God in order to be president.

01:26:57.000 They still maintain that that's a necessary thing.

01:27:00.000 If you are a person running for president that says, I don't know, I have no idea, and I'm personally inclined to believe that maybe there's no God. 0.99

01:27:10.000 People would go, fucking Christ. 1.00

01:27:11.000 Crazy. 1.00

01:27:12.000 You would never get to be president. 0.91

01:27:13.000 We have this fundamental desire, even if there's zero proof, and there absolutely is zero proof, especially when you think about the stories in the Bible and some of the more preposterous ones, there's no proof that any of those ever really took place.

01:27:27.000 What was the guy that called the she-bear to kill the children that were mocking him for being bald?

01:27:34.000 I have no idea.

01:27:35.000 You don't know that story?

01:27:36.000 No.

01:27:36.000 There was a guy in the Bible that these kids were giving him a hard time for being bald.

01:27:42.000 So he called upon God to avenge him. 0.86

01:27:46.000 And God sent a bear to kill the children that were mocking him.

01:27:50.000 Yeah. 0.76

01:27:50.000 That's intense. 0.76

01:27:50.000 Guess what? 0.76

01:27:51.000 Elisha.

01:27:53.000 Yeah.

01:27:54.000 Elisa?

01:27:55.000 How do you say that?

01:27:56.000 Elisha?

01:27:57.000 Elisha.

01:27:58.000 Yeah.

01:27:58.000 He went up to Bethel.

01:28:00.000 As he walked along the road, some boys came from the city and mocked him.

01:28:05.000 And when they mocked him, God sent a bear. 1.00

01:28:09.000 And the bear fucking killed the kids. 1.00

01:28:12.000 Wow. 1.00

01:28:13.000 Yeah, there's some crazy stories.

01:28:15.000 Yeah, I'm guessing that didn't happen, kids. 1.00

01:28:17.000 I'm guessing that God sent such a piece of shit that he sends a bear to kill little children. 1.00

01:28:22.000 How about the kids just... 1.00

01:28:23.000 They were talking shit about this guy being bald. 1.00

01:28:25.000 They didn't notice a bear was sneaking up on him. 1.00

01:28:27.000 More likely. 1.00

01:28:29.000 You know, when you're talking a bunch of shit, you make noise. 1.00

01:28:31.000 The Bears realize, oh, these are high-pitched noises. 1.00

01:28:34.000 Probably delicious little kids.

01:28:35.000 And then they moved in.

01:28:37.000 But still, 70%, man.

01:28:40.000 So it's less people believe, but still, that's a giant number.

01:28:46.000 It is.

01:28:47.000 It is a giant number.

01:28:50.000 So...

01:28:51.000 Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.

01:28:52.000 Like, how many of them actually believe?

01:28:54.000 You know?

01:28:55.000 And to what extent?

01:28:57.000 Right.

01:28:57.000 And what is it they actually believe?

01:29:01.000 Yeah, so something, my thesis is that something's wrong.

01:29:05.000 This isn't an anti-religion thing for me.

01:29:07.000 I have no beef with religion.

01:29:09.000 If it's making people positive and connecting and doing something great, I'm all for it.

01:29:13.000 I am not a religious person, and so maybe I needed this for me to have something that could give me the ideology that I needed.

01:29:23.000 Reading The Power of Myth really changed my life.

01:29:26.000 I read it, and he talks about in the book how Basically, one of the things he thinks is going wrong with divorce, and the reason that divorce rates are so high, is that ritual has really lost its impact, and you don't have these demarcation points between childhood and adulthood, or between being single and being married.

01:29:43.000 And he was like, you know, back in the day when you were 13, they took you out of the woods, they literally ripped you from the clutches of the women, took you out, and with no anesthetic, they would circumcise you.

01:29:51.000 And now you know, like, you're a man.

01:29:54.000 So, because there's none of that, you get arrested adolescents, and there's...

01:29:58.000 Sort of a weakening of the import of the religious ceremony as far as divorce goes.

01:30:05.000 And so people aren't taking that as seriously.

01:30:07.000 And he talks about ritualistic scarification and how, man, you knew something had changed when people put your body through some kind of transformation.

01:30:14.000 So when I got married, I went through a ritualistic scarification to remind myself that I was a different man the day before.

01:30:21.000 What kind of a ritualistic scarification did you go through?

01:30:24.000 A tattoo.

01:30:25.000 Oh, that's a grandiose way.

01:30:28.000 Right?

01:30:28.000 How dare you?

01:30:30.000 How dare you call that a ritualistic scarification?

01:30:33.000 That's how I saw it.

01:30:34.000 So I don't do tattoos.

01:30:35.000 You'll see nothing.

01:30:36.000 I have one tattoo, which I did specifically for my wedding.

01:30:39.000 I've never gotten another one.

01:30:40.000 And at the time, this isn't the case anymore, but at the time, one of my biggest sort of realistic fears was needles.

01:30:47.000 So it was me saying to my wife, I'm going to go scar my body using needles, which freak me the fuck out, to remind myself, A, I want it to be painful, and then B, I want it to be permanent, and I'm glad that it's something that I have this active fear of.

01:31:04.000 So in doing all of that, it really did make the whole wedding just a bigger deal to me.

01:31:10.000 And so...

01:31:11.000 That's very interesting.

01:31:12.000 But I think when we're talking about Joseph Campbell and the issues that I think are very real about people not experiencing like a grand event or at least some sort of a ritual that gets them to adulthood, I think there's a significant issue that we have with just things being far too easy.

01:31:31.000 And that there's no real difficult path where the warrior has to find themselves in myth or in a person's actual life that they have to overcome some very difficult thing.

01:31:43.000 Now, for you, I'm sure some of those...

01:31:47.000 I mean, we all have difficulties in life, but some of the difficulties that you experienced when you were in film school was like this creation of this thing.

01:31:53.000 But once you tried to create this thing and it didn't work out right...

01:31:58.000 Don't you have this desire to go back and try to figure it out, right?

01:32:01.000 Don't you have this desire like, okay, I see where I fucked this up.

01:32:04.000 I try to be like John Woo instead of trying to be like Alfred Hitchcock, and I see that there's a way you could be systematic.

01:32:10.000 You're obviously a systematic thinker.

01:32:13.000 You're a quote organizer.

01:32:15.000 You have all these quotes in your mind, and you have all these systems that you follow, including following some of Gary Vee's social media stuff, right?

01:32:22.000 It's like you're a system.

01:32:24.000 These are ways to engage in success, right?

01:32:28.000 So, I would feel like that would haunt you a little bit.

01:32:32.000 It's interesting.

01:32:33.000 It doesn't.

01:32:35.000 So, since then, I have done a low-budget feature film.

01:32:39.000 Oh, okay.

01:32:40.000 I wrote a screenplay that was turned into a feature film.

01:32:44.000 That was a horrifying experience.

01:32:46.000 Why was that?

01:32:46.000 Just because it didn't turn out the way that I wanted it to.

01:32:49.000 It wasn't executed as written.

01:32:51.000 I mean, look, this is the age-old writer's complaint, right?

01:32:55.000 But I've...

01:32:56.000 I have changed as a person over time to where I'm just now way more interested in scale.

01:33:03.000 So I still have that love for cinema.

01:33:06.000 I love storytelling.

01:33:07.000 I think story is a way that we assimilate information.

01:33:12.000 When I think about...

01:33:16.000 Yeah.

01:33:20.000 Yeah.

01:33:31.000 Looking at how impactful media has been for me and for a lot of people, and this whole notion of self-signaling.

01:33:38.000 Because at the end of the day, the way that I see the company is we're a merchandise company.

01:33:44.000 So you create the intellectual property.

01:33:47.000 I mean, this is out of Disney's playbook.

01:33:49.000 You create the intellectual property in order to create the merchandise.

01:33:53.000 And it's the merchandise that drives a lot of the revenue.

01:33:55.000 Not all of it, but it drives a lot of the revenue.

01:33:58.000 And in having that, you also create this thing called self-signaling.

01:34:03.000 So as I dress a certain way to tell you something, which is how it starts, it also tells me even more loudly than you.

01:34:10.000 So as I, like, I have a Batman shirt, and I have a Superman shirt, and when I wear those shirts, it reminds me of my tie to that ethos, right? 0.99

01:34:17.000 So Batman is, you don't have any superpowers, motherfucker, you just have to work really, really hard. 0.98

01:34:21.000 And you've got to be prepared to tap into the dark side, to keep pushing hard enough to... 0.99

01:34:26.000 You know, avenge what you believe is your failing.

01:34:28.000 So Superman, it's a perfect analogy for passion, right?

01:34:32.000 He's a normal guy except when he's in the yellow sun.

01:34:35.000 And that gave me a way to think about getting in line with my passion.

01:34:39.000 I remember I was obsessed with that when I decided to go in and quit.

01:34:41.000 I was like, I'm like Superman and I am out of the yellow sun because I'm not passionate about anything.

01:34:46.000 And the only time that I can do things that make me feel...

01:34:48.000 That are extraordinary are when I'm really passionate.

01:34:51.000 The Matrix, obviously, is like the core metaphor for my entire existence.

01:34:55.000 That is such a crazy thing to say.

01:34:57.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:34:58.000 It's a weird thing.

01:34:59.000 The Matrix is the core.

01:35:00.000 Wow.

01:35:01.000 Okay.

01:35:02.000 The core metaphor, right?

01:35:03.000 I recognize it's a metaphor.

01:35:04.000 Right.

01:35:04.000 But it's a core metaphor.

01:35:06.000 And not to beat Joseph Campbell to death.

01:35:08.000 Didn't expect him to come out of my mouth this many times in this interview.

01:35:11.000 But he said, if you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.

01:35:14.000 Right.

01:35:14.000 So, and people have talked a lot about that with how the world changed from the metaphor of the steam engine to the metaphor of the computer.

01:35:21.000 And that just, it changed the way that you thought about workers.

01:35:24.000 It changed the way you thought about intelligence and just changed a lot of things just by shifting from one metaphor to the next.

01:35:30.000 So, dealing in the realm of metaphor, giving people access points to different things through storytelling, which obviously is riding on the back of metaphor.

01:35:40.000 I think is an incredible access point.

01:35:42.000 But more importantly, it's something people already do.

01:35:45.000 So you're leveraging behavior that's already there.

01:35:47.000 And that was like a necessary part.

01:35:49.000 The same thing with Quest, right?

01:35:51.000 Don't ask people to eat less and exercise more.

01:35:53.000 We've been telling them that for 60 years, whatever.

01:35:55.000 It works for a narrow band of the population, but it doesn't work for everybody.

01:35:58.000 So finding something that people are already doing, people are already working.

01:36:02.000 We're good to go.

01:36:12.000 We're good to go.

01:36:23.000 See a movie one time.

01:36:25.000 Most people just enjoy it.

01:36:26.000 They just go to see a film to be entertained.

01:36:28.000 Correct.

01:36:28.000 There's a fascinating approach, though, to create films to change the way human beings think about life.

01:36:34.000 But now keep in mind, if we don't entertain first and foremost, we've got nothing.

01:36:37.000 Right.

01:36:38.000 So people need to be able to watch the movies and have no idea that there's a message.

01:36:42.000 Disney is a perfect example of that.

01:36:43.000 Disney is trying to tell you that rights should always win, bad should always lose.

01:36:46.000 Right, but they make movies for children.

01:36:47.000 Sure.

01:36:47.000 I mean, it's a different thing, like organizing something like that to a grand scale to make films for humans that you think can pull them out of the matrix through entertainment.

01:36:56.000 Do you think this works for kids, but only kids?

01:36:59.000 I don't think kids are a little bit more pliable and they don't have enough information.

01:37:03.000 Sometimes you can show them some things through, you know, cartoons and things along those lines.

01:37:09.000 It could set in with them a little bit easier and better.

01:37:12.000 I mean, it's absolutely possible to send a message through a film that really radiates with people, resonates with people.

01:37:17.000 Because I have a deep and abiding fear that this is only going to work with kids.

01:37:21.000 Really?

01:37:21.000 Yeah.

01:37:22.000 I don't know that that's true, but there's a guy...

01:37:24.000 Do you know Jeffrey Canada?

01:37:25.000 No.

01:37:25.000 Super cool dude.

01:37:27.000 Grows up in Harlem and realizes, dude, the school system is fucked. 0.99

01:37:31.000 Like, everyone has just given up on all of us here in Harlem. 0.99

01:37:34.000 But he's super bright.

01:37:35.000 Ends up going to Harvard and says, I'm going to become a doctor.

01:37:38.000 I'm going to go back and change the education system.

01:37:41.000 And does that.

01:37:42.000 Goes back and spends I don't know how many years in the education system and just realizes...

01:37:46.000 Yeah, this is never going to work.

01:37:48.000 You can't change it from the inside.

01:37:49.000 There are so many politics. 1.00

01:37:50.000 There's so much entrenched bullshit. 0.99

01:37:52.000 Like, this is going nowhere. 0.99

01:37:53.000 So he leaves and decides that he's going to give up on adults.

01:37:59.000 And he's going to start with kids.

01:38:01.000 In fact, not even that.

01:38:02.000 He's going to try to find women who are about to become pregnant. 0.95

01:38:04.000 And all he wants to do is...

01:38:06.000 Because he looked at...

01:38:08.000 What makes a middle class kid successful versus an inner city kid who goes on to not be successful? 0.76

01:38:13.000 What's the difference?

01:38:14.000 And what he found was it's the number of words that a child hears before the age of five, I think it is, and the ratio of positive to negative.

01:38:21.000 He said your average kid in the middle class hears five million words before the time that he's five, 70% are positive, 30% are negative.

01:38:27.000 Whereas in the inner city, a kid here is like 2 or 3 million by the time that they're 5, and the ratio is reversed.

01:38:34.000 So it's 30% positive, 70% negative.

01:38:36.000 So he said, I'm just going to make my life's mission, solving that problem.

01:38:41.000 That's a crazy issue.

01:38:42.000 That's a gigantic issue.

01:38:43.000 Massive.

01:38:44.000 And he said what happens is the language centers in the brain just don't develop properly.

01:38:47.000 And because of that, they struggle later in life trying to get a job because they can't communicate as well.

01:38:52.000 So he felt like he had just put his finger on sort of that baseline.

01:38:56.000 But the reason I bring Jeffrey Canada up is because he gave up on adults.

01:38:58.000 So as I'm thinking through this, look, we haven't executed on this.

01:39:01.000 Nobody should be taking me seriously right now.

01:39:02.000 I know that.

01:39:03.000 So I've got like this, and I'm like, everybody told us we were crazy when we said we're launching a protein bar. 1.00

01:39:08.000 People are like, motherfucker, are you stupid? 1.00

01:39:09.000 The 1,600 protein bars in 2009. It is the most crowded space ever. 1.00

01:39:14.000 One guy actually told us, I need another protein bar like I need another hole in the head.

01:39:18.000 And then five years later, we're Inc.

01:39:20.000 500, second fastest growing company in North America, grew by 57,000%.

01:39:24.000 How?

01:39:24.000 Because we believe that it could be done, right?

01:39:26.000 So I get it.

01:39:27.000 People think I'm crazy.

01:39:29.000 100%, right?

01:39:30.000 People were enjoying it, and that's what they wanted.

01:39:32.000 And that's kind of the same thing with making films.

01:39:34.000 You have to make a good product that people are going to enjoy.

01:39:36.000 But it's a fascinating thing that you're coming to it saying that you want to change people and take them out of the matrix, but you're also saying that you're like a memorabilia company or a...

01:39:47.000 A merchandise company.

01:39:48.000 A merchandise company.

01:39:48.000 I mean, that's kind of the same thing, right?

01:39:50.000 It's like you're talking like...

01:39:53.000 Objects that go along with your films, and that's a big part of what...

01:39:57.000 So you're planning all this out from a financial standpoint, right?

01:40:00.000 But what about a creative standpoint?

01:40:02.000 To be able to put together all these ideas, like to say, oh, I want to make the new Matrix.

01:40:07.000 Oh, I want to make the new Star Wars.

01:40:08.000 And I want to change the world.

01:40:09.000 I want to drag people out of this mundane reality they live in and show them the power of myth.

01:40:14.000 Right.

01:40:15.000 Yeah.

01:40:16.000 More, I want to show them the power of belief.

01:40:17.000 I don't think they're ever going to see the power of myth.

01:40:19.000 Why wouldn't they see it if you could see it?

01:40:21.000 Maybe they will.

01:40:22.000 I don't know.

01:40:22.000 Just not a focus for me.

01:40:23.000 I just want them to take the usable mindset and apply it.

01:40:27.000 And I think that we live in an interesting time now where social media can comment on the things and say, here's what's extractable from this.

01:40:34.000 So will you try to adjust films accordingly?

01:40:36.000 If someone comes to you with an idea and a script and they want this project to be created, you try to adjust it accordingly to try to have the highest amount of impact?

01:40:44.000 How are you going to do that?

01:40:46.000 Yeah, so hopefully we'll be a beacon to people that really understand the mindset.

01:40:50.000 So we laid out a three-phase approach to building the studio on the website literally from day one.

01:40:56.000 Uh, and phase one is build the community.

01:40:58.000 So we're building a community around ideology, people that come and listen.

01:41:02.000 In fact, this is how you and I connected.

01:41:03.000 So one of my, um, one of the people that follows my show wrote to you and said, Joe, you really got to get this guy in your show and sent you a clip.

01:41:10.000 And you said, Hey, this is actually pretty interesting.

01:41:11.000 You should come on.

01:41:12.000 Um, so that's all around ideology, right?

01:41:16.000 So I've spent the last 20 plus years of my life constructing my mindset to allow me to be successful.

01:41:22.000 And because I've had a certain level of success, people take me seriously.

01:41:25.000 So now what I'm trying to do is just find the most efficacious way to actually get that ideology in people's hands.

01:41:32.000 And I know if I can incept them in entertainment, I've got a shot.

01:41:37.000 But if I can't entertain them first, I've got nothing.

01:41:40.000 What a fascinating way to sneak it in.

01:41:42.000 If we don't have good movies, I think this is where you were going. 0.99

01:41:45.000 If the movies aren't just good in and of themselves, we're fucked. 0.98

01:41:49.000 We've got nothing. 0.69

01:41:49.000 So we have to get really good at making really good movies that people want to see for their own sake. 0.69

01:41:55.000 So that's a Herculean task, no question.

01:41:59.000 And we're going to have to assemble an amazing creative team that really understands at a very deep level the ideology of the company.

01:42:06.000 Well, in and of itself, making entertaining films, like having a company that makes entertaining films is difficult.

01:42:11.000 Brutal.

01:42:11.000 Make entertaining films that have this sort of life-changing message.

01:42:15.000 I don't envy you.

01:42:18.000 Sounds like a long task.

01:42:20.000 Definitely.

01:42:21.000 But, hey, look, it can be done.

01:42:22.000 If Disney did it, and arguably they certainly did with kids.

01:42:26.000 You know, I mean, they've made some really powerful movies with some really good messages.

01:42:30.000 No question.

01:42:31.000 No question.

01:42:32.000 And look, it's going to be a bumpy road.

01:42:33.000 I know that.

01:42:35.000 There's guaranteed failure, and hopefully success.

01:42:38.000 But it's something that I believe in enough to fight for it.

01:42:42.000 So when you talk about, you know, don't you want to go back and sort of make good on the filmmaking promise?

01:42:49.000 No, that's not what I meant.

01:42:51.000 What I meant was, there's no promise.

01:42:53.000 I just meant, is it something that you think, like, hmm, maybe I could have adjusted.

01:42:58.000 Maybe I could have done this.

01:42:59.000 Maybe I could have built on my skill set.

01:43:00.000 Maybe I could have continued making films and tried different approaches.

01:43:04.000 And I feel like, you know, if you had a real passion for it and it was something you were so interested in, you said you were killing it early on in your film career or in your film school career.

01:43:13.000 Like, I wonder why you didn't, like, continue to try to readjust.

01:43:18.000 I was surprised by that as well.

01:43:20.000 I think everyone, myself included, thought, you know, when we had the success at Quest and now I could do whatever I wanted, that I would just immediately start writing and directing.

01:43:28.000 And it just didn't feel, it wasn't what I wanted to do anymore.

01:43:32.000 Well, that's an important message in and of itself, because to tell people, you know, like, look, follow your heart's content and don't be trapped in your earliest ideas.

01:43:41.000 If you have an idea early on that, you know, I'm going to become this, and then somewhere along the line you discover this new interest that kind of supersedes the other one and surpasses it.

01:43:51.000 Follow that one.

01:43:52.000 You don't have to say, oh, I thought you were a filmmaker.

01:43:55.000 I was for a little while. 1.00

01:43:57.000 You could do whatever the fuck you want. 0.91

01:43:58.000 I mean, you could find a million different pathways and a million different avenues, but ultimately, what's going to resonate the most with people is something that you're actually passionate about. 0.97

01:44:07.000 You really feel.

01:44:08.000 You really feel.

01:44:08.000 Not faking it.

01:44:09.000 Not trying to establish some sort of a narrative that you think is going to be successful with people or resonate with people, but what do you actually feel?

01:44:17.000 And if you can figure that out, man...

01:44:19.000 You know, that seems to be like the great pieces of art, the great works, you know, that people have created, the opportunities that I've got a chance to talk to people that have done some pretty amazing shit.

01:44:30.000 It was all like an interest.

01:44:33.000 It was all a thought that they had that they followed through all the way and then got immersed in it, you know.

01:44:39.000 But it was never thinking about it in terms of the ultimate eventual result.

01:44:45.000 You know, that's why I think it's interesting that you're approaching this and you don't just have an idea to make something creative and fascinating and fulfilling to enjoy, but you also want to establish some sort of a narrative that changes the way people look at the reality around them.

01:45:02.000 Yeah, definitely.

01:45:03.000 And when I think about what I'm really driven by, and this was almost a confession to my team, was I don't care about...

01:45:11.000 I love movies.

01:45:12.000 And I love the path that we're on right now, but I don't love it enough to risk my fortune and to work as hard as I'm working.

01:45:20.000 That just never would have drawn me back.

01:45:23.000 So what I do care enough about to put everything at risk and to work as hard as I'm working is...

01:45:30.000 Pulling people out of the matrix.

01:45:31.000 And I know those are my words that maybe don't get people to see what I mean.

01:45:35.000 So the kid that I big brothered for, just to give you an idea.

01:45:38.000 So his name was Rashan, an amazing kid.

01:45:40.000 He was very disruptive in class.

01:45:44.000 He was drug and alcohol impacted, but still really bright.

01:45:46.000 But they had him on like Ritalin or something.

01:45:48.000 I honestly don't know what, but it stunted his growth.

01:45:50.000 He was really small.

01:45:51.000 I'm so hyper-aggressive.

01:45:53.000 He was adopted, and his mother was abusing him, but I didn't know that.

01:45:58.000 And I'm very sad.

01:45:59.000 I was just too young, and I didn't know what was going on.

01:46:02.000 Even though looking back, you suddenly realize, holy hell, there were so many clues.

01:46:06.000 But I didn't pick up on them.

01:46:08.000 And just living a life that is...

01:46:13.000 It's horrible.

01:46:14.000 And growing up in the inner cities as well on top of all that.

01:46:17.000 And so I come and of course, he's the student they give me.

01:46:21.000 And all I'm supposed to do is for eight weeks, I'm just supposed to come in and help him do his homework.

01:46:25.000 And so he's very clever.

01:46:27.000 So I would show up and for an hour, he would ignore me, he would get in fights, he would push me away.

01:46:32.000 And then like five minutes before I'd have to leave, I'd say, I have to leave.

01:46:35.000 And he would start crying and freaking out, please, no, just stay, help me with my homework.

01:46:39.000 And so finally, I'd be like, alright, I'm going to help you, but if you don't right now get to work, I'm leaving.

01:46:45.000 And so then he would be an angel and do his homework.

01:46:47.000 And then week two was exactly the same, and three, and four, and five. 0.99

01:46:50.000 And I thought, this fucking kid is playing me. 0.99

01:46:52.000 Like, he's like trolling me in real life. 0.99

01:46:55.000 And at week six, they tell you, hey, warn them that you're only coming two more weeks so that they're not surprised.

01:47:00.000 Cool.

01:47:01.000 Week six, I tell them, hey, just so you know, I'm only coming two more times.

01:47:03.000 And he goes nuclear.

01:47:05.000 Fantastic. 0.61

01:47:05.000 He just freaks the fuck out. 0.61

01:47:07.000 It was so shocking. 0.93

01:47:08.000 I didn't have experience with kids, so he's flipping out.

01:47:12.000 And this was already a kid with behavioral problems. 0.99

01:47:14.000 So I was just like, what the fuck is going on? 0.99

01:47:16.000 And finally, slowly, all too slowly, I realized, okay, wait, is this because I just told you I'm leaving? 0.99

01:47:22.000 And he's like, yes.

01:47:23.000 And I said, look, largely just to calm him down.

01:47:27.000 As long as I live in Los Angeles, I will help you do your homework, but you have to do it the second I get here.

01:47:34.000 Deal?

01:47:35.000 And he said, deal.

01:47:36.000 So that turns into an eight-year relationship where it became way more than helping him with his homework.

01:47:41.000 I started taking him to movies and trying to...

01:47:43.000 Show him just a different side of life and took him on this thing called Troy Camp.

01:47:48.000 So we got to see the mountains for the first time and just all like really, really getting involved in his life.

01:47:54.000 And then when it finally came out that his stepmother or his adoptive mother was beating him...

01:48:02.000 From what I heard, she was chasing him down the street with a baseball bat. 0.99

01:48:06.000 I literally couldn't believe that was real.

01:48:09.000 And so they took him away immediately.

01:48:12.000 And I was the first phone call.

01:48:14.000 And his lawyer called me and said, he has asked that you be the ward of the court or the guardian to help him through the court system.

01:48:21.000 And so I helped him do that and helped him get into foster care.

01:48:26.000 I'm just looking at him going, I know where this ends up.

01:48:29.000 Like, I know where this ends up.

01:48:31.000 And it isn't good.

01:48:32.000 And so that was the seed, right?

01:48:34.000 I didn't think that I'm going to dedicate my life to helping people like this.

01:48:36.000 It wasn't that. 0.97

01:48:37.000 But it planted a seed, and it really fucked with me. 0.70

01:48:40.000 And I stayed involved with him in foster care for a couple years, but then they just moved him so far away that I was broke at the time. 0.86

01:48:47.000 It was just too far away.

01:48:48.000 So...

01:49:05.000 I'm sure. 0.99

01:49:08.000 Absolutely fucking crazy. 0.99

01:49:09.000 And I thought, Jesus, you're a better entrepreneur than I am. 0.99

01:49:12.000 They're telling me how they watch the cop cars and when they change shifts and how they know that they're being identified by their cars and so they change cars all the time.

01:49:20.000 It's crazy.

01:49:21.000 And so I'm like, Jesus.

01:49:22.000 It gave me this concept that I called mining for astronauts.

01:49:26.000 And I'm like, in here, in here somewhere, in here being the ghetto, are some of the most amazing minds I've ever come across.

01:49:34.000 And these guys could be anything. 0.97

01:49:35.000 They could be fucking astronauts, right? 0.99

01:49:36.000 Like, whatever they wanted, but they don't believe they can. 1.00

01:49:39.000 And when I would interview them, it was Nuts. 1.00

01:49:42.000 So imagine you're interviewing, and I came up with just like a fast way where I didn't have to think, I could just ask the same questions.

01:49:48.000 And one of the questions was, a magic genie shows up, he's going to grant you one wish and one wish only.

01:49:52.000 You can't wish for more wishes.

01:49:53.000 You can't cure cancer or bring anybody back from the dead.

01:49:55.000 It's got to be something for yourself.

01:49:57.000 What do you wish for?

01:49:58.000 Universally to a person, they all set a job.

01:50:00.000 Okay, that makes sense.

01:50:01.000 You think that's what I want to hear, so you're trying to get a job so you can tell me you want a job. 0.92

01:50:05.000 Then when we get past that bullshit, and I tell you obviously that's not true, like, what do you really want? 0.88

01:50:10.000 Like, what's a job meant to get you? 0.99

01:50:11.000 Money.

01:50:11.000 Okay, do you want money or is it something else?

01:50:13.000 No, it's money.

01:50:14.000 Awesome, man.

01:50:15.000 It's a magic gene.

01:50:16.000 You can ask for whatever you want.

01:50:17.000 What do you want?

01:50:17.000 You know what answer?

01:50:18.000 Every single one of them gave me.

01:50:20.000 What?

01:50:21.000 One million dollars. 1.00

01:50:22.000 You can't buy a fucking house for a million dollars. 1.00

01:50:24.000 It was so crazy. 1.00

01:50:26.000 It's a magic genie, Joe.

01:50:28.000 Like, you can ask for a trillion dollars.

01:50:31.000 But their frame of reference was so small.

01:50:33.000 One guy, this is like the one exception, said he wanted an airport.

01:50:36.000 I found that so weird.

01:50:38.000 So I had to push on that one.

01:50:39.000 I was like, why an airport?

01:50:40.000 He said, because business guys come through the airport.

01:50:42.000 And I was like, okay...

01:50:45.000 What good does that do you?

01:50:46.000 And he said, because then they can teach me about business.

01:50:49.000 Now think about that for a second. 0.94

01:50:51.000 How fucking many steps removed are you from what you actually want? 0.98

01:50:55.000 You say I'm a systematic thinker, right? 0.98

01:50:58.000 So I had to learn that.

01:51:00.000 That's not where I started.

01:51:01.000 So I spent, thankfully, one of the things I'm most grateful for in my life, I have to learn everything the hard way.

01:51:07.000 But because I learned things the hard way, then I can show other people what I did, where I fell down, and how hopefully they can avoid some of the mistakes.

01:51:13.000 Now Most people ignore me.

01:51:14.000 I'm well aware of that.

01:51:15.000 But you have a desire to teach people this.

01:51:17.000 This is what's interesting.

01:51:19.000 You're not just internalizing this.

01:51:20.000 This is not just yourself.

01:51:21.000 Correct.

01:51:22.000 And I... Look, I'm wired for compassion.

01:51:25.000 I really enjoy other people succeeding.

01:51:28.000 My favorite example of that is when I was five, so my sister would have been eight and a half, I pretended not to see some Easter eggs so that she would win the Easter egg hunt because she cared about winning and I didn't.

01:51:41.000 So...

01:51:43.000 That's just a natural inclination that I have that I've fed into, that I've chosen to take pride in.

01:51:48.000 And because of that, look, it would be a way cooler story if I said, I met this kid Rashawn and it changed my life forever and I knew I had to dedicate myself to helping people.

01:51:55.000 It didn't.

01:51:55.000 I met Rashawn and then spent almost a decade chasing money.

01:51:58.000 Right?

01:51:59.000 That's the truth. 0.98

01:52:00.000 So, but in that process, like that way that I felt in those moments where I had hoped that he would do something, when I met the kids that were working on the production line and I could see, fuck, I am, one of them literally came to me. 0.98

01:52:12.000 He's absolutely hysterical. 0.96

01:52:14.000 He's in tears. 1.00

01:52:15.000 And he, um, he was like, you're like my fuck. 1.00

01:52:20.000 And stopped himself. 1.00

01:52:21.000 And I thought, obviously he was about to say, you're like my father, but that felt weird for him.

01:52:24.000 So he stopped and said, you're like my older brother.

01:52:26.000 And he's like, I've just never had anybody that actually cared about me.

01:52:30.000 So...

01:52:32.000 Now mix that with the fact that I'm only interested in scale.

01:52:35.000 What does that mean? 0.99

01:52:38.000 Touching 10 people and having 10 people show up at my funeral and just be like, this motherfucker changed my life. 0.98

01:52:43.000 And because of him, my 18 grandkids and all that, they're going to have a better life. 0.98

01:52:46.000 That just doesn't do it for me.

01:52:48.000 And I'm being honest.

01:52:49.000 Maybe I am a worse person because of this.

01:52:51.000 I honestly don't care.

01:52:52.000 It's just true.

01:52:52.000 It's who I am.

01:52:53.000 So scale is interesting.

01:52:55.000 I would much rather touch a million people and none of them know who I am.

01:53:01.000 And know that a million people's lives are better off than touch 10 and they credit it all to me.

01:53:07.000 It's just way more interesting to me at scale.

01:53:09.000 Now, I also believe that a 501c3 nonprofit is like the worst way in the world to do something if you're trying to do good.

01:53:18.000 Finding a way to do it through commerce where it's a self-sustaining economic engine, that's interesting.

01:53:23.000 Because the thing that, like, this is so weird to me, if you have a nonprofit, you have to go I literally beg money from people that have a for-profit company that have figured out how to make money.

01:53:32.000 They probably have a little bit of guilt, so they want to give money to you.

01:53:35.000 It is the weirdest dynamic ever.

01:53:36.000 Rather than just building a company that at its core is trying to do something good and awesome that you can be proud of. 0.95

01:53:41.000 I'm fucking proud. 0.97

01:53:42.000 If I crash and burn, I'll still be proud of what I was trying to accomplish. 0.99

01:53:46.000 I believe in it. 0.98

01:53:47.000 It makes me feel good to want to do amazing shit for people. 0.91

01:53:50.000 I actually believe that this is the way that you give somebody a belief system that is antagonistic to acquiring a new belief system. 0.98

01:53:59.000 To do it at scale, they can't want it, right?

01:54:01.000 The people that want to change their physique do.

01:54:05.000 They eat right, they exercise, and they get results.

01:54:09.000 And the people that don't, and there are people that I love very much in my life, and I'm going to lose them too early because they don't want to eat better.

01:54:16.000 So the only solution I could think of was, there's no option.

01:54:19.000 Everything is healthy and delicious.

01:54:21.000 So all the things that you want to eat, you can.

01:54:23.000 And so that was the mission at Quest.

01:54:25.000 Certainly while I was there, that was the mission at Quest. 0.98

01:54:27.000 We are going to find, what are those, it was like 26 categories that we thought got people into trouble, and we are going to make a healthy version of each and every one of those motherfuckers. 0.98

01:54:35.000 And that was the mission. 0.95

01:54:36.000 So that there would literally be nowhere for people to go to eat badly.

01:54:40.000 Because they could just pursue their most base instincts of just gluttonous.

01:54:44.000 Give me carbs, sugar, salt.

01:54:47.000 I want it all fat.

01:54:48.000 And that they'd be eating a healthy version.

01:54:50.000 But it felt and tasted just like that.

01:54:52.000 So our first marketing message was stop compromising.

01:54:55.000 So that's a long way of saying it's all about leveraging people's behavior against them to get them to make the right changes.

01:55:00.000 And I believe that the way that we're going to do this, we live in a unique time where I can go in fucking microphones like this and I can explain to people how to build a mindset. 0.96

01:55:08.000 I do this literally, I put out probably six or seven hours worth of content every fucking week. 0.99

01:55:14.000 What? 0.98

01:55:15.000 Just telling people, yeah, 100%.

01:55:16.000 100%.

01:55:17.000 Really?

01:55:17.000 The day you're ready to come on my show, B-Rob, which people have been begging for forever.

01:55:22.000 What's your show?

01:55:23.000 Impact Theory.

01:55:26.000 What is that?

01:55:26.000 So impact theory is me bringing on people like you that have had just unbelievable success and finding out what are the things that you did to get there.

01:55:34.000 So my interview style is I'll know more about you than your own mother. 0.88

01:55:38.000 You'll show up, you'll get a little unnerved because how the fuck did I figure all this stuff out? 0.81

01:55:42.000 But then we can have a really cool interview because wherever you want to go, I'm going to be able to go.

01:55:47.000 I'm not a journalist.

01:55:48.000 I want you to shine.

01:55:49.000 You've literally inspired me, by the way.

01:55:51.000 I told you a little bit about why when we first started talking.

01:55:55.000 You're the only person that makes me sweat from diversity. 0.99

01:55:58.000 Fuck, that's like my thing as an interviewer, dude. 1.00

01:56:00.000 I can interview anybody. 1.00

01:56:02.000 It doesn't matter. 1.00

01:56:04.000 But then I saw your fucking show, and I realized I can't interview a porn star. 1.00

01:56:09.000 I probably would suck with Hannibal Buress, somebody who's just fucking funny and needs somebody to go back and forth with. 0.99

01:56:15.000 And I realized, but fucking Joe can do Dominic D'Agostino, like, on one day, and then immediately turn around and do, like, porn jokes. 0.99

01:56:23.000 Anyway, so would love to bring on people like you. 0.99

01:56:27.000 Come on.

01:56:28.000 Because it all started back at Quest.

01:56:30.000 I have this 25-point bullet belief system.

01:56:34.000 I wanted everyone in the company to understand I used to be an employee.

01:56:38.000 I had an employee's mentality.

01:56:40.000 And here are the 25 things I had to do to my mind to become an entrepreneur and generate wealth in my life and feel like I was in control of my life.

01:56:47.000 Nobody else controlled my destiny but me.

01:56:49.000 Here are the 25 things. 0.99

01:56:50.000 I had this unending fear that people were going to memorize the fucking bullet points and they wouldn't live them. 0.96

01:56:54.000 So I wanted to create a show where they... 0.98

01:56:56.000 Because it's hardest to impact those closest to you.

01:56:58.000 Don't know if you've experienced that.

01:56:59.000 I certainly have.

01:57:01.000 So...

01:57:02.000 Say that again?

01:57:04.000 It's hardest to impact those that are closest to you?

01:57:06.000 Why is it hardest?

01:57:10.000 I think it's because there's too much familiarity.

01:57:13.000 My mom looks at me...

01:57:15.000 Impact, you mean, in a way, like, inspire them?

01:57:17.000 Yeah.

01:57:18.000 Right.

01:57:18.000 But not even through your own success?

01:57:19.000 You don't think that it inspires them?

01:57:21.000 Like, my mom is finally starting to say things like, tell me a little bit more about whatever.

01:57:27.000 Mm-hmm.

01:57:27.000 But for a long time...

01:57:30.000 But is that impacting her, or is she just curious?

01:57:32.000 Not yet.

01:57:33.000 She's asking in the way that, like, hey, I'm actually interested in making that change.

01:57:37.000 But I'll just speak for myself.

01:57:39.000 In my life, for whatever inadequacy that I have, it's been very hard for me to impact those closest to me.

01:57:43.000 So what I wanted to do at Quest was bring in people that were wildly successful.

01:57:49.000 And I wanted, unprompted, I wanted the audience to see, you're going to hear them say the same things I say, even though we don't know each other.

01:57:58.000 And time after time after time, they heard people going through.

01:58:02.000 These people have never seen the 25 bullet points, but they would go through like, I mean, maybe it was like six or seven of them.

01:58:07.000 It's not going to be exactly the same, but they would touch on so many. 0.98

01:58:10.000 It was fucking freaky. 0.52

01:58:11.000 And so that really started to play into, okay, we're now moving into a different era where you can step forward. 0.99

01:58:20.000 And I think transparency and authenticity are a big fucking deal in companies today.

01:58:24.000 I think that Gen Z is going to demand it, and I think any company that hides... 0.97

01:58:27.000 Did you say Gen Z? Gen Z, yeah.

01:58:30.000 Is that Generation Z? Is that what you're talking about?

01:58:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:58:32.000 Have you not heard that?

01:58:33.000 No.

01:58:33.000 Oh, man, welcome.

01:58:34.000 You're going to hear it everywhere now.

01:58:36.000 Is that the new thing that the kids are saying?

01:58:39.000 There's new kids coming up?

01:58:40.000 Generation Z? Jamie, heard of this?

01:58:42.000 Marketers are saying it.

01:58:43.000 If you type in Gen Z, you get like a bazillion results.

01:58:46.000 So Gen Zers are known for, like, they say that they're the altruistic generation.

01:58:53.000 So these people are not comfortable with big business.

01:58:56.000 And I think that they're going to demand a level of transparency into the people that are running the company.

01:59:02.000 And the people that get that, Elon Musk, Elon Musk.

01:59:07.000 We're good to go.

01:59:25.000 Um, that's why I create all this content.

01:59:27.000 That's why I bring people on that have inspired me and my goal is just to set them up.

01:59:31.000 So I want everyone to walk away from my show going like off camera behind the scenes.

01:59:35.000 Like that was the best interview I've ever done.

01:59:38.000 So, um, yeah, that's, that's like my mission.

01:59:41.000 I just want people to see it from all these different angles, hear all these different people say it.

01:59:45.000 And quite frankly, selfishly, I want to learn.

01:59:47.000 And so one, the biggest, the thing that probably impacted my life the most was when I stopped building my ego around being smart.

01:59:54.000 And I started building my ego around being a learner and being super humble and sitting at people's feet and just wanting to listen and learn and then immediately put what I learned into action.

02:00:04.000 So the show is also wildly selfish for me and the staff because we get to meet incredible people that have just super empowering wisdom.

02:00:12.000 And so I believe that the dual track of the social content was just on the nose, right?

02:00:17.000 You would come on the show and you would just tell us like how you did it.

02:00:20.000 You would talk about like How you got into stand-up comedy. 0.96

02:00:23.000 Oh, I got into stand-up comedy because I was a fucking funny guy when everybody else was nervous, right?

02:00:26.000 But then, like, it actually has to become a craft, and you got to do it over and over and over, and talking about that grind and how you get good over time, and people are going to trip the fuck out and just, like, go, whoa, maybe that's exactly what I need to do, which is a message I think a lot of people need right now, which is, it's a long grind.

02:00:40.000 Yeah.

02:00:41.000 So, it's stuff like that, but that's impacted.

02:00:43.000 Tom, I've got to wrap this up.

02:00:44.000 Thank you very much, man.

02:00:46.000 I appreciate it and good luck.

02:00:47.000 It's a very ambitious project and I'm certainly going to be watching.

02:00:50.000 Awesome, man.

02:00:51.000 Thanks for having me on.

02:00:52.000 Thanks for starting Quest.

02:00:53.000 I really love your bars.

02:00:53.000 You guys are awesome.

02:00:54.000 Thank you.

02:00:55.000 Alright, folks.

02:00:56.000 See you on Friday.

02:00:58.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 16, 2017

Joe Rogan Experience #999 - Tom Bilyeu

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