The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - My Chat with Dennis Kneale, Author of ＂The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_823)

00:00:00.420 Hi everybody, this is Ghat Saad. It's never not the right time to have wonderful conversation

00:00:06.560 with the folks, even if it's Easter weekend. Dennis Neal, I'm going to introduce you formally,

00:00:12.700 but first I want to extend the welcome. Thank you for being on the show.

00:00:16.640 It's so great to see you and I appreciate this opportunity.

00:00:19.540 Thank you. Okay, let me just read the official media kit that I received in terms of who you

00:00:24.600 are. Dennis Neal is an award-winning journalist, media strategist, advisor to senior executives,

00:00:30.000 and the host of the What's Bugging Me podcast, which I've not been invited to yet, but I won't

00:00:35.600 hold that against you. Hosted by the Ricochet Network, he was an anchor of CNBC and at Fox

00:00:42.440 Business Network after serving as a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal and managing editor of

00:00:47.300 Forbes. He helped write Wealth Management, a Wall Street insider on the dirty secrets of financial

00:00:53.180 advisors and how to protect your portfolio by Ed Butowski. Neal lives in New York City. Am I

00:01:00.680 missing anything before we drill down? No, my gosh, we probably run out of time for the interview.

00:01:05.400 Thanks so much. And by the way, I record my interview for my podcast every Wednesday and I'd be honored

00:01:12.040 to have you on. Guys out there who are listening to this, I want you to know, I've followed this guy,

00:01:17.480 okay, for two or three years. I've just been in all of his tweets. He's so brave and courageous at a time

00:01:23.800 when polls show that 40% of Americans, the boldest people in the world, 40% are afraid to post on

00:01:31.040 social media because they might get canceled. And this man, he talks the talk and he walks the walk.

00:01:36.980 And I've always tried to do that. And this man has 1.1 million followers and I have about 66,000.

00:01:42.660 So I am in awe of him and I'm so honored to be here. And man, if I can get you any Wednesday just

00:01:48.300 to come on and talk about what's bugging you, that's a standing invitation. And then one day

00:01:52.060 I shall owe you a favor. Thank you so much. Well, today what we want to talk about is this beauty

00:01:58.160 right here, the leadership genius of Elon Musk with a beautiful sort of background. It's a gorgeous

00:02:04.300 cover shot. Didn't HarperCollins do a great job, that kind of dark figure, especially now? You know,

00:02:09.920 at first I thought, oh my gosh, this is great timing. He's controversial, controversy sells

00:02:17.420 books. And yet I've been told that the sales are disappointing. And I suddenly thought, is

00:02:24.680 this because half the population has been brainwashed into hating a man that is probably the best thing

00:02:31.040 to happen to America, one of them in a hundred years? It's so bad. Absolutely. And I mean, I want

00:02:36.600 to drill down in terms of how you decide when, when did you first say, this is a book that I need

00:02:43.220 to write. So let's start there. Yeah. What was the process by which I think the book is broken up

00:02:48.120 into sort of 11 leaders? Lessons. Lessons. 11 Lessons of Elon. I love alliteration. Let's start with

00:02:56.660 inspiration. Yeah, go ahead. So, all right. So when I was an anchor a decade ago at Fox Business,

00:03:03.920 I remember hearing these couple of young gals outside my office talking about this guy, because

00:03:09.760 one, I'm a producer there, and now she's a very senior executive at another network, said, oh,

00:03:14.560 my girlfriend is on a yacht with this billionaire guy, this PayPal billionaire, Elon Musk. And I thought

00:03:21.000 that sounds like a cologne. And that was my first time ever hearing about him. And I was just so

00:03:25.620 fascinated that one degree of separation removed from me through this producer was a woman who's kind

00:03:30.580 of partying with this guy. Started watching him then. Then cut to years later, a very talented

00:03:37.780 editor in charge of the Broadside Books imprint at HarperCollins. I worked with him on Lou Dobbs,

00:03:43.360 the late Lou Dobbs' book. And he ends up sending an email one day simply saying, do you know of a

00:03:49.100 business writer somewhere who could do a management book, lessons from Elon Musk? And I kind of thought,

00:03:54.920 well, yeah. And within a weekend, I came up with a proposal. And that's for anyone out there who

00:04:00.300 wants to write a book thinking about it. I once had a guy tell me, he said, you take a weekend to

00:04:04.860 write a 10,000 word proposal, laying out the book, the ideas, the chapters, the flow. If you can finish

00:04:10.500 the weekend doing that, that means that you really want to write this book. If you never get around to

00:04:15.000 it, it's because you really don't want to write it. Well, this proposal was ready like that.

00:04:19.520 Those 11 lessons with some help from the editor, Eric Nelson, came into vision. And I just had a

00:04:26.820 criticism from a friend of a friend. He read it and he told my friend, frankly, I don't see what's

00:04:32.600 so special. All of these 11 lessons are lessons that every executive should follow. And I just

00:04:38.520 thought, thank you. Thank you very much. That would be good. And they are good lessons. But what I think

00:04:44.380 is that I could double sales of this book. And that is why we are here, to get this book on the

00:04:50.060 New York Times bestseller list in defense of Elon, in the New York Times, which hates Elon. And we

00:04:55.460 could double sales if I can tell enemies out there, if you want to work against this guy, this book will

00:05:01.100 show you how he operates. He's got, for example, two lessons going on, three lessons of the 11 that are

00:05:06.880 involved in Doge. Lesson two is reduce, reduce, reduce, cut back everywhere on everything. I have,

00:05:13.780 we have a $40 billion a year storage industry in this business, where we store stuff five miles

00:05:19.100 from our home that if we really needed it, it would be here. But instead, we're paying to not

00:05:23.740 throw it out, throw it out. He does that with Teslas, which have 10,000 parts compared with 40,000 in a

00:05:29.900 Ford. He did it with SpaceX, reduced it down to stainless steel and fuel. Another lesson, the highest

00:05:37.740 nail gets pounded down first, so strap on a helmet. Elon doesn't shrink from controversy.

00:05:43.760 He says, bring it. And lesson four, tease your critics and torture your enemies. And man,

00:05:52.080 Elon does that with alacrity, doesn't he?

00:05:54.420 Indeed. Well, you may or may not know, I've gotten to know Elon personally. And, you know,

00:06:01.760 we've communicated many times. We've met in person.

00:06:04.080 He, you know, we haven't.

00:06:05.720 I have one response to an email, just one. And I feel like Wayne's world, where he looks at that

00:06:11.300 guitar in the window and says, yes, one day I will have him. He will be mine.

00:06:15.460 Hey, you know what I'm hoping for, Dennis? That I might actually be able to finish a sentence

00:06:20.400 without you interrupting me. You think that's going to be possible?

00:06:23.400 So sorry.

00:06:24.500 I'm kidding. Don't worry. Listen.

00:06:26.060 I'm over-revving.

00:06:26.840 I'm Lebanese. So you've got to be able to ride with the jabbing. Don't worry about it.

00:06:32.520 No, but what I was going to say is, I've gotten to know him personally. And knowing him personally,

00:06:38.060 it frustrates me to see all of the nonsense that is spewed about him. Because once you know someone

00:06:44.220 personally, you feel as though, you know, he's owed, not that he needs my protection, but for

00:06:49.880 somebody to stand up. I was going to say, as someone who, okay, you don't know him personally,

00:06:54.520 but you wrote this book about him. Do you get offended to see that here we've got this,

00:06:59.540 you know, treasure? He's not an American treasure. He's a world treasure who is trying

00:07:04.180 to always do the good thing, the right thing. And yet he is so maligned. Does that piss you off?

00:07:09.320 It really does. It offends me for a couple of reasons. And number one is it's that old cliche,

00:07:15.300 that old saying, no good deed goes unpunished. And I'm so sorry to see that come true. But more than

00:07:21.280 that, because I was with CNBC and Fox and Wall Street Journal and Forbes, you know, I love journalists.

00:07:29.060 And I respect journalists. And I did for a long time. And today, many of them, I don't recognize

00:07:34.420 at all. And what they've done to this man and how they've made him the enemy simply because he allied

00:07:40.260 with Trump because he was truly worried about our nation. And it's just appalls me that the media

00:07:46.000 could side against him like that. They've turned from watchdogs who we at least try to hide what our

00:07:51.140 bias was into liberal lapdogs who just ply the Democrat agenda, most of them. And I'm so sorry to 0.95

00:07:59.040 see it because Trump broke them. Do you think that you're having written this book is going to

00:08:05.600 ensure that you're not invited to the cool kids party anymore? It may, but I never have been. So

00:08:11.520 that's okay. I've been on the B list. Why? Why? I don't know because I am anyone who sees me,

00:08:20.300 they would know this guy's dying to be on the A list. He's desperate for the approval of strangers.

00:08:24.720 Anyone who takes a full job, time job in television is desperate for the approval of

00:08:29.780 strangers. But I don't know what, you know what it is, the differences? Because when I went to the

00:08:34.040 Wall Street Journal at the start of my career, and I was from the University of Florida, and everyone

00:08:39.860 around me in the New York office, the home office was from Princeton and Yale and Harvard.

00:08:45.160 I didn't hear you mentioned Cornell, which is my alma mater.

00:08:48.200 There you go. Okay. And they were from Cornell as well. All these Ivy Leaguers. And they have

00:08:52.600 a sense of entitlement that things just come to them because they deserve them. And a guy like me

00:08:58.980 who came from a lower middle class upbringing, and just my mom raising me for most of that time,

00:09:05.460 we don't ever feel like we deserve or are entitled. And we have to fight and scrap for every little

00:09:13.200 step ahead that we get. And I think those of the Ivy League, they spell that desperation in me.

00:09:19.800 And so I've never been quite invited into their circle.

00:09:23.440 You know, it's actually very refreshing that you're very open about some of these things,

00:09:28.560 right? Because most people would have the reflex to not share that, you know, out loud. And the fact

00:09:35.620 that you do actually speaks to the fact that you're probably ultimately quite confident about your

00:09:40.700 abilities, right? Because it takes a lot of confidence to be self-deprecating. And so

00:09:45.420 screw those Ivy Leaguers. You're doing well. You're writing a book on Elon Musk. Let's put it back. Go 1.00

00:09:50.700 out there and buy this book. Tell us, how did you decide on why 11 lessons? Why not 10? Why not 12?

00:09:57.360 Yeah. So 10 is cliche, and it's two lettermen, right? Seven would be a better number. Seven is a

00:10:04.220 wonderful prime number. It's a lucky number. It's in dice games. So seven would be good,

00:10:09.360 but it's not quite long enough. But then the one great writing technique I have, and this is my

00:10:14.260 fourth book. It's the first one I've done on my own. The one great writing technique I have is

00:10:18.380 alliteration. So 11 works so well with lessons and Elon, 11 lessons of Elon. And they work so well

00:10:27.400 together. For example, lesson one is the most bizarre one, because it says that Elon may really,

00:10:34.020 truly believe that we could be living inside a vast simulation right now that's so advanced that

00:10:41.860 we just have no idea that it's real. And you think that's ridiculous. But then you realize, 0.96

00:10:46.840 well, 10,000 years from now, actually, that's not impossible to perceive, to imagine. But then we

00:10:53.380 realize the universe is almost 14 billion years old. And that means that there would be 1.4 million

00:11:00.040 10,000 year stretches. So to Elon, the thought we've gone almost 1.4 million stretches without

00:11:07.000 achieving that yet somewhere in the universe seems impossible. So it could be very true. And that means

00:11:11.940 how do we, how do we know? Well, then what comes along? Lesson two, reduce, reduce, reduce. There's a

00:11:17.540 physicist I interviewed in that lesson who has created a new law. He's a fascinating interview. You would love

00:11:24.100 him. The second law of infodynamics. And it says that while the rest of the universe is given to

00:11:30.680 entropy and complexity and more and more trash, information in our universe is constantly reducing

00:11:37.640 itself. And he noticed this in nature, COVID, the original version versus 20 generations later,

00:11:44.440 it kept shedding DNA characters. And scientists used to think that this shedding was mathematical error.

00:11:51.320 And along comes the physicist who says, no, no, this is nature's efficiency. They're doing this on

00:11:57.880 purpose. The organism does the same old stuff with far fewer letters and characters. And he says,

00:12:03.640 and all through nature, they're constantly reducing information required. Why? And then he suddenly

00:12:08.560 thought, if this were a simulation, they have figured out it would take 45 planet Earths of computing power

00:12:16.200 to do a perfect simulation. Okay. And if this were a simulation, you'd want to cut down on information

00:12:23.100 and storage as much as possible everywhere. So the lesson works. And then lesson 11, Elon says,

00:12:30.460 I'm looking at the lessons. Go on. I'm listening. Elon says the most likely outcome in life

00:12:34.680 is the most ironic one, the most opposite of what you tried to make happen or what you thought would

00:12:40.280 happen, or it's the most entertaining one. Well, that hooks into the simulation because think about it.

00:12:45.380 A physicist who first came up, Bostrom, in 2001, came up with seminal paper on the simulation.

00:12:51.340 And he said, if there is a simulation, the guys who are running it, they wouldn't do it to come up

00:12:57.340 with boring outcomes. They're doing it for entertaining outcomes. And so that kind of teaches

00:13:02.720 you to live your life bigger, louder, fuller. It all might be a game anyway.

00:13:08.320 Right. Well, I mean, there are so many things I want to jump off from what you just said.

00:13:12.600 But number one, speaking of physicists, one of the... By the way, what's the name of the

00:13:16.440 physicist that you're mentioning?

00:13:18.460 I've now forgot it because you asked. Hang on.

00:13:20.560 Okay. Just so that we can...

00:13:22.020 But I just love the guy. And I spent an hour and two hours on Zoom with him. He was so wonderful.

00:13:30.400 I'm thinking...

00:13:31.560 I just remembered it. Vobson. V-O-P-S-O-N. 1.00

00:13:34.260 Okay. I'll check him out. Here's another guy you might want to check out. I'm giving

00:13:37.960 him some free publicity. Do you know David Deutsch?

00:13:40.860 I do not. But I love physicists.

00:13:43.080 Yeah. Well, David Deutsch is a gentleman who recently came on my show twice. He came back

00:13:48.120 to back for... We had such a great first conversation that we ended up having a second conversation.

00:13:52.960 And to me, he epitomizes what a real intellectual should be like. Because one of the great disappointments

00:14:01.000 in my long academic career, and I've been a professor for 31 years, very difficult for

00:14:05.560 me to imagine that that's true, is that many professors are actually not intellectuals,

00:14:11.640 right? They're hyper-specialists. They know their small, restrained field, but ask them

00:14:17.120 to talk about art history or to talk about, you know, whatever, geopolitics. If they only

00:14:22.420 know physics or chemistry, that's all they're comfortable talking about.

00:14:25.260 Right. David Deutsch was certainly not that, albeit he is a quantum computing

00:14:30.840 and quantum mechanics guy. So he certainly has the scientific imprimatur. So, but what

00:14:35.560 I was going to go back to one of your earlier lessons where you say, you know, kind of tease

00:14:40.000 or, or, you know, go after...

00:14:41.980 Orchure your enemies. Yeah.

00:14:43.000 Orchure your enemies. So I think I would put that lesson as part of a greater mindset.

00:14:48.720 So in The Parasitic Mind, my 2020 book...

00:14:53.340 An incredible book.

00:14:54.360 Thank you so much. In the last chapter, I talk about activate your inner honey badger.

00:14:59.100 And the honey badger, of course, is a ferocious, fierce animal. And I recently released a clip

00:15:05.180 on my channel where I said, here's what's the greatest commonality across Donald Trump,

00:15:11.400 Elon Musk, and Joe Rogan, is that they are true honey badgers in their own domains. They

00:15:17.020 all don't give an F. So would it be fair to say that encapsulated in one or more of your

00:15:24.160 lessons is the honey badger? Exactly. Yeah. That, that lesson three, right before lesson

00:15:30.220 four, which says, hey, highest nail gets pounded down, strap on a helmet. And, you know, instead

00:15:35.280 of our fleeing controversy, instead of our fleeing reprisal, maybe we should say, I don't give

00:15:40.700 an F, like you say. And that's what Elon does. And maybe it turns out greatness requires being

00:15:48.200 willing to not give an F. Well, and I think, so I often mention this maybe once a month, I'll put

00:15:54.160 out a tweet on this and I'll say, look, the great people of history, whether they be negative forces,

00:16:00.720 Hitler, or they be positive forces, are not equivocators. They're not fence sitters. They see a vision

00:16:07.400 and they go full throttle in, right? So your very kind words at the start of our show, when you were

00:16:13.100 talking about sort of my public engagement, I can't be anything other than exactly what I am,

00:16:18.960 which is if I were to modulate a millimeter of what I want to say, I would feel fraudulent.

00:16:25.200 And therefore I just go full throttle and I don't give an F. Right. And, and that's really worked for

00:16:31.140 you. Whereas for me in 2014, when I left Fox with 15 minutes notice, and they had a security guard

00:16:38.920 escort me out of the building, literally, I, I, I almost fainted. I had to hold up a wall.

00:16:44.380 You know, I waited for those offers to pour in because by golly, I got, and this guy, he says

00:16:49.920 what he really feels. None came. I mean, nothing, nothing. Why did you get, if, I don't know if

00:16:55.320 you're allowed to speak about it or not, but what, what led to your very ceremonious departure?

00:17:01.020 Because my, because my friend, someone I just adore and admire so much, Maria Bartiromo.

00:17:05.880 Right. A huge career risk. She was so hurt at CNBC because they were going to try to, you

00:17:11.700 know, uh, kind of start to phase her out perhaps, or cut her salary. So boom, she risks everything.

00:17:17.180 And she leaves that network that she was part of for 20 years and goes to Fox business, which

00:17:22.940 was the second also ran and wasn't yet big. And the very day she shows up for work and she

00:17:28.820 comes through the turnstile. She says, Dennis, I'm so sorry. You know, you don't blame me.

00:17:33.340 Do you, she knew already I was being fired that day. And I didn't know. And because I

00:17:39.060 knew I was losing my anchor chair and they're shaking up the schedule to make room for Maria, 1.00

00:17:42.320 but it turns out they had to make room in the budget. She's coming in costing 6 million

00:17:46.200 a year reportedly, and they needed to cut a million. So cut me and two other producers.

00:17:50.680 And the three of us six months earlier had been in the office of one of the senior executives,

00:17:55.340 bitterly having an argument, you know, the two of them against me. And then we all three

00:17:59.300 were taken out together on the same day, six months later. And suddenly I'm thinking,

00:18:04.280 I like those two guys more than I knew. They had to cut the budget.

00:18:09.720 Have you maintained a working relationship with Fox? Did you ever appear on any of their

00:18:14.160 shows? Well, you know what? It's interesting because why is it that my two alma maters,

00:18:20.040 Fox Business and CNBC, have yet to have me on air to talk about this book? At CNBC,

00:18:26.060 it would be because we're liberal and Elon's a bad man. At Fox, I have heard the PR department,

00:18:32.540 the most feared corporate PR department in the land. I've talked to media reporters. They're

00:18:38.820 terrified of this PR department. And apparently they have a rule saying, if you've been an anchor or

00:18:43.980 on the network, you can't come back. Now, I imagine they break that for somebody somewhere,

00:18:48.960 sometime, but they haven't broken it for me yet. And when I was there, I couldn't even get them to

00:18:53.340 meet me for lunch. And I was taken to the principal's office 13 times for tweets that

00:18:59.000 they thought were too controversial. Oh, when I hear stories like that, and I think about how

00:19:06.080 I go about my life, I probably wouldn't make it there by nine o'clock Monday morning. I wouldn't

00:19:12.200 last. And I've been wanting to ask you because I see your stuff. And it's one thing for any person

00:19:19.180 of repute to be doing the stuff you're doing and to be that bold and that blunt. But for a professor

00:19:24.680 in academia, you must feel like an outsider and a pariah all the time. And I always have felt like

00:19:33.040 that. And when I was writing about Elon Musk, I felt like that, that Elon probably, I just got this

00:19:39.080 sense that he wants to be loved. You see him on stage at those rallies and he's jumping up and his

00:19:44.300 belly's showing because the t-shirt's not long enough as he's raising. And he's just so happy

00:19:48.700 to be loved. And I think all of us have that and want that in basic nature. It's just that

00:19:54.200 some of us work a lot harder to win that love than others. And that is what drives us.

00:19:59.700 Well, and I think so in, I've, I've, I mean, I've been in very close proximity to President Trump.

00:20:05.900 I was invited to an event at Mar-a-Lago. He was maybe five meters from me, but I didn't get the

00:20:10.760 pleasure of actually interacting with him. So I, so anything that I'm saying is speculative and that

00:20:15.740 I don't really know him personally, but I feel that one of the reasons why Trump reacted often

00:20:23.880 the way that he did in his first term, much less so in a second term is that he just wanted the love

00:20:31.220 and appreciation and credit for doing things right now. Part of that comes from a sense of slight

00:20:37.780 narcissism, but we, any of us who are going to be in the public eye want to be patted on the back

00:20:43.420 saying, attaboy, you did well. It's human nature. So that's not so weird or creepy, but the, the more

00:20:49.500 that he didn't get it, then the more sort of indignant he would become. And then that would

00:20:54.600 come across as though he's not being presidential. The second term, that monkey is really off his back.

00:21:00.240 Guess what? You threw everything at me and I still came out winner. And so he just seems a lot

00:21:06.700 more at peace with his existential reality. Am I right here? Oh, you're so right. And you know,

00:21:12.160 the other thing is his winning 77 point something million votes more than Kamala, his winning the

00:21:18.320 all seven swing States, his winning both houses of Congress, his winning 312, was it electoral voids

00:21:24.360 something 42 more than required to win. He's feeling more loved now. Yeah. He's lost that anger of

00:21:30.580 feeling because, you know, I thought about this one time, imagine what it was like for him in his

00:21:34.700 first term. Imagine if he's utterly innocent and he was of all Russiagate stuff and all of these

00:21:40.980 thousands of stories saying this stuff about you. And it's not true. And it must've been like a

00:21:46.560 twilight episode zone episode for him. And about, I'll just add to that. I met the man twice before

00:21:52.000 he ever ran for president one-on-one, one time. And, and, and, you know, Stockholm syndrome where

00:21:58.160 you're taking hostage, you start to identify, there's some other kind of syndrome. There must be a name

00:22:02.040 for it. And you may know it where you can meet the worst man in history, but if he's nice to you

00:22:07.020 personally and polite, I will defend him for years to come because of my personal experience. Now, the

00:22:13.980 first time I bet the today show on the manager at Forbes, I do a hit and he's the apprentice, he's in

00:22:18.420 the green room and I'm about to leave because back in that day, they gave you a car to take downtown.

00:22:23.820 Instead of you having to get on the subway and, and suddenly they said, wait, can you, we'll get the car to

00:22:27.580 wait? Uh, Donald Trump is in the green room. He wants to introduce himself to you. I go in there

00:22:32.940 and he's, you know, and he's, oh, and have you met rich dad, poor dad author here? This is my friend.

00:22:37.280 He, as if he's not enough alone for me to meet. Okay. Right away. I'm a fan. Then a couple months

00:22:42.320 later, I'm dinner with a billionaire, six people. Trump comes up, sits next to me for the better part

00:22:47.420 of an hour. And he goes around the table and he doesn't talk about himself once. And he asks each

00:22:53.000 person, their story. And each of us, when we went home that night to our partner or something, you

00:22:57.440 won't believe it. I got to sit with Donald Trump and you ask, and what did he say? Well, he asked me

00:23:02.400 about this and I told him about that. Yeah, I already know that, but what did he say? So this guy was

00:23:06.680 so winning and I just defended him for, for years based on that personal experience. You know, it's

00:23:11.620 funny what you just mentioned about that sort of, let's call it the syndrome of you could take a bad

00:23:17.240 person, not that Donald Trump is a bad person, but you can take any person as long as there's a

00:23:21.020 personal affinity. Personal experience. Yeah. Guess who just experienced it? Bill Maher. Exactly.

00:23:28.640 He's getting red pilled before our eyes. He so wanted to go there and be snide, but instead you

00:23:34.240 end up liking the guy and the guy's been a salesman all of his life, right? He wants to be liked.

00:23:38.840 But what, what disappoints me in Bill Maher is that, is the fact that he didn't have the sort of

00:23:46.280 personal acuity, if I can put it that way, to have extrapolated that Donald Trump would have had

00:23:53.680 those qualities, even though he, he hadn't met him yet. So for example, when I often judge politicians,

00:23:59.680 even though I haven't met any of them, I always use the, would I like to have a beer with them,

00:24:05.480 even though I'm not much of a beer drinker. Right. And so, you know, George Bush, I think I could

00:24:10.160 really have, I mean, he just strikes me like a cool guy. Bill Clinton. Yes. He pretends that he's

00:24:15.200 listening to me, but he's creepy because he's looking for who's the hot girl that's passing

00:24:19.440 in his peripheral vision. Barack Obama is a, is a smug, malignant narcissist. And I'm not talking 1.00

00:24:27.240 politics. I'm not, I'm truly basing this on what I'm reading from their personal cues. Yeah. There

00:24:33.380 is no way in hell I could have not predicted that sitting down with Donald Trump, you would end up

00:24:40.020 liking him more. And yet it took Bill Maher to have personal interaction with him to be able to

00:24:45.640 come to that conclusion. And that is because Libs, Libwit, Demwit Democrats have been so poisoned,

00:24:53.420 haven't they, about this man. And when all you see in all of the media coverage is bad man, bad man,

00:24:58.600 bad man, that's what you end up believing. And it's, it's so unfortunate because it doesn't have to be

00:25:04.560 this way. I really thought things would change after he won this time around. I thought that

00:25:09.620 the Democrats would come back to the table and say, okay, you crazy, let's, let's go ahead and 0.57

00:25:14.480 let's work together on a few things here. But no, they've taken up the permanent opposition.

00:25:19.260 Trump has brilliantly pushed them into opposing some of the most rational, common sense policies,

00:25:25.200 and instead supporting some of the most radical, ridiculous things, using taxpayer money for

00:25:30.500 prisoner sex change operations. I mean, it just gets more and more bizarre, doesn't it? 0.80

00:25:35.760 Right. When, when you, when you first, let me put it up again. Let's get those sales going.

00:25:40.580 Buy this book, people. By the way, just for full disclosure, Eric Nelson is my editor for my next

00:25:47.660 book, Suicidal Empathy. Phenomenal book. As a matter of fact, what, just for you to, well,

00:25:53.520 anyways, let me first finish this one.

00:25:55.100 You're very lucky. He's great.

00:25:57.340 Yeah, yeah. He's wonderful. When you first sat down to write this book, had the Elon Musk,

00:26:06.100 Donald Trump link been officially made, or this was pre that?

00:26:10.600 No, this is before he, this is way before the assassination attempt. The assassination attempt

00:26:15.900 was the thing that switched Elon over from, I'm supporting him privately to, I'm getting on stage with

00:26:22.840 this guy when he saw that. And I was watching live at the time as well. And I cried when I saw him get

00:26:29.840 up and do that and, and say, fight. I mean, I was so moved by that. And I'm even moved now when I think

00:26:36.760 of it and how the media managed to memory hole and bury that story in that moment. Oh my gosh,

00:26:43.980 they're part of the great government psyop. It's just horrible. And, and Elon, you know,

00:26:49.280 he has done this at great personal expense, a great expense to me. I own Tesla stock. I watched

00:26:55.000 it fall from four 50 down to two 20 just on political backlash because how dare he come out

00:27:02.000 and speak up. And, and so he's done this at great personal cost. He's had two assassination attempts

00:27:07.400 over the past year or two, and yet he's done it anyway, because he really felt like we're in trouble.

00:27:13.680 You know, I have an essay on what's bugging me this, this week it's out or last week about creation,

00:27:18.500 destruction. I live right across the street from a block long construction site. They tore down a jail

00:27:24.020 that had been there since 1957 and, uh, they tore it down to build a new one. Okay. Well, it took him

00:27:30.440 a few months to tear that sucker down, all 15 floors of it. It's not going to be built up till 2029.

00:27:36.440 It is so much easier to destroy things than it is to build it up. And our country, 250 years

00:27:43.640 of working on building the best nation on earth that the world has ever seen. And we almost lost

00:27:50.440 it in a matter of two presidencies, Obama in eight years and Biden in four years, the nation was going

00:27:56.560 crazy. And Elon felt like I better stand up. And had he not bought the X platform. And by the way,

00:28:04.580 a huge risk, another rule says, bet on yourself and take on huge risks because what the hell he bet

00:28:09.980 $25 billion, I think it was of his own money on that acquisition. No one does that. In Silicon

00:28:14.500 Valley, you use other people's money, right? And a judge in Delaware forced him to go through with

00:28:21.180 that deal. He didn't want to do it, but that deal changed everything because now you can't cheat on

00:28:26.220 election because it'll show up on X. They've got video of somebody doing something. Now X was the

00:28:30.920 great equalizer that gave the other voice an actual megaphone instead of crushing it the way the

00:28:37.440 government did in the Twitter files expose. And the media buried that story too. That's why they're

00:28:42.680 mad at Elon. The media, I wrote more columns, okay, on that Twitter file scandal than the entire

00:28:50.400 staffs of the New York Times and the Washington Post combined. I did a count, okay? And they buried

00:28:55.900 the story. Why? Because it was only conservative voices being muzzled. But it'll be your voice next

00:29:00.940 time because the Trump administration came out and requested 5,500 liberal accounts be silenced

00:29:06.820 on old Twitter before Elon bought it. Yeah. Well, to your point, I wholeheartedly agree that of all

00:29:13.060 the things that Elon has ever done or will ever do, in other words, I'm going to be even more bold

00:29:18.400 in saying not anything that he's done, but anything that he could ever do could not be as historically

00:29:25.360 as important as the purchase of Twitter. And I actually said that you can go check it on my channel

00:29:31.260 probably within a few days of him having purchased what was then Twitter. I made that point because,

00:29:38.820 I mean, exactly to your point, I mean, I can't even begin to fathom or imagine where we would be

00:29:44.560 today. I mean, certainly my voice would be much smaller. I'm sure your voice, probably Kamala Harris

00:29:49.980 would be president. We'd all be, you know, getting taken off the thing because we say that men can't 1.00

00:29:56.620 menstruate. But by the way, to your earlier point about how, how is it possible that I can exist

00:30:01.600 within the most parasitized ecosystem called academia? You need to see my colleagues in their

00:30:09.160 antipathy, their unhinged antipathy toward Donald Trump. It's simply astounding. What upsets me the

00:30:17.320 most, Dennis, is that many of these guys are actually psychologists. They are behavioral scientists.

00:30:24.500 They teach decision-making in some of the leading business schools in the world. I mean,

00:30:30.360 and the reason why I know them well is because I studied and do research in psychology of decision

00:30:35.860 making. So I know all of the top decision theorists. And yet those same decision theorists

00:30:41.100 who are professors at universities that charge 80 and $90,000 a year for your kid to go there

00:30:48.000 suddenly lose their complete ability to be rational decision makers when it comes to even

00:30:54.280 finding a singular positive point about Donald Trump, which is the perfect manifestation of 0.99

00:31:00.940 the parasitic mind. 0.96

00:31:02.840 And it's amazing that they're unable to step outside themselves and realize that they're being 0.95

00:31:06.560 victimized by the great psyop. It's, it's, it's so strange. And one other thing though, you had

00:31:12.420 mentioned, you know, I mentioned, uh, lesson 11 talks about ironic outcomes are the most likely ones.

00:31:17.080 The internet was created to help rebels in, in terrible, oppressive countries fight government.

00:31:25.920 And the ironic outcome is that decades later, what it really is, is the platform that government uses

00:31:31.940 to conduct surveillance, mass surveillance on its own people. And that's happened in the U S

00:31:36.900 and that's happened in the UK and everywhere else. And it is such an ironic opposite of what the

00:31:41.760 internet was supposed to be. Indeed. Indeed. So tell us very briefly, what was, you said,

00:31:48.380 this is the fourth book you've, you've worked on, but the other, my own. Yeah. Your own. What,

00:31:54.220 what's the, the reason I'm asking this question, I just told you that before coming to this chat,

00:31:58.580 I was working on suicidal empathy myself. I've got my own, you know, writing, you know,

00:32:03.660 regimen or how I go about it. What's your, you know, you wrote a book with 11 lessons. Give us the top

00:32:10.180 three lessons for aspiring authors of what they should do to hopefully be able to be contacted

00:32:15.940 by Eric Nelson and call us to write a book. Well, then I, I'd say there's lesson five.

00:32:22.520 Most people are loafers work harder than you ever have before. There's some great data in there on how 0.83

00:32:28.480 little young people, how much less they work than their predecessors, how 15% of young men are utterly

00:32:34.900 detached from the workforce and haven't had a paycheck in a, in a whole year. And they spend their time

00:32:39.140 playing video games. So you've got to work harder. Every time someone comes to me, they want to do a

00:32:43.240 proposal of a column. I say, write the column and send that. Okay. Lesson six, free speech is

00:32:48.160 everything. Stand up and be heard. You got to speak out. You've got to say something important and sing

00:32:53.720 it to the rafters. Lesson seven on the media to hell with them. They are shameless shills. And I'm a 30 year 0.97

00:33:01.780 journalist. And maybe that's one reason why some of the more liberal media haven't yet been booking me to

00:33:06.080 talk about this book, but just think if I had called it the leadership failures of Elon Musk,

00:33:12.580 would I suddenly be everywhere in the media and being interviewed like. Number one New York

00:33:18.460 Times bestseller. Yeah. I mean, look, character limit to New York times or three New York times

00:33:23.460 reporters did this latest Elon book on how he's destroyed Twitter character limit. He has a limited

00:33:28.860 character. And there was breaking Twitter by the guy who did the big PayPal book. And I, you know,

00:33:33.900 two years after that acquisition, come on, man, it is the single most important media platform in the

00:33:39.840 world, right? Because of its openness that everyone decried. Well, and by the way, I often will get a

00:33:46.860 blowback from fellow Jews, right? I'm Jewish. And the Jews will write to me saying, how could you be 0.99

00:33:54.720 friends with Elon and not go after him when he tolerates all these anti-Semitic accounts? And then my

00:34:01.200 answer is, have you ever been slapped by this thing called freedom of speech? I mean, you, I mean,

00:34:07.060 imagine the chutzpah, right? Forgive me for using a Jewish term. Imagine the chutzpah whereby

00:34:13.480 you're speaking to a free speech absolutist, right? I defend the right of Holocaust defiers 0.95

00:34:18.920 to spew their most insulting nonsense. You expect me to go to Elon and say, hey, Elon, can you please

00:34:26.280 take out? Here's the list of all of the accounts that I'd like you to take out. But in the, in the

00:34:31.960 minds of those Jewish folks that write me all this nonsense, they view freedom of speech through a 1.00

00:34:37.520 consequentialist lens, right? What's wrong with you speaking to Elon so that we can get rid of hate? 0.92

00:34:44.260 But then that also applies to when I criticize Islam, but then wouldn't be the Muslims be perfectly 1.00

00:34:50.800 justice. In fact, it applies even more for Islam. Because let's remember that the Biden administration

00:34:57.040 came out with an order protecting Islam and discouraging Islamophobia after the October 7th

00:35:03.660 attacks, not for an order for anti-Semitism. And I looked into the stats and it turned out that

00:35:08.960 anti-Semitism per 100,000 Jews was two to three times the rate of attacks of Islamophobia per 100,000

00:35:17.020 I'm surprised that it's only that. I would think it's much higher, but go ahead.

00:35:20.660 Right. And all right. So that was one thing. You had a few things to unpack and now I've just lost

00:35:25.600 it. I should have.

00:35:26.180 That's okay. We'll come back to it. But the bottom line is that this idea that, you know, freedom of

00:35:32.680 speech is great. And then you put a, but the second that you put a, but you're entering the

00:35:38.060 consequentialist word, but go ahead.

00:35:39.620 It turns out this group has taken for 25 years, polls of Americans on their first amendment views,

00:35:45.080 free speech. And the latest poll, I mentioned this in the book shows one third of America

00:35:50.580 believes it is more important to prevent hate speech than it is to preserve free speech. The

00:35:58.980 first amendment protects, literally protects hate speech, but they think one third and then

00:36:03.360 disturbingly another third. I'm not sure. I'm not sure about that balance. So two thirds of America 0.57

00:36:08.740 failed to realize that the first amendment is everything. It protects all kinds of speech and

00:36:14.200 that's okay. The way to drown out that speech is not to muzzle it. It's to come up with better

00:36:18.660 speech that out argues it. Let those cockroaches bathe in the sunlight and let them say their 1.00

00:36:24.260 hateful things and then rip them apart with their own words. You know, I'm just, and here's 0.97

00:36:30.180 where we went down the wrong road. Okay. This phrase harmful content became accepted into the

00:36:39.260 lexicon and words cannot leap off the screen and smack you in the face. Only a human can do that.

00:36:45.820 Blame the human who did it. Don't blame the words that he read. That's his fault. And this thought

00:36:51.460 that content will harm you, change the channel, we used to say. And it's just ridiculous. And 0.97

00:36:57.500 everyone's looking for a safe space and everyone shops for Umbridge. He hurt my feelings. He said a bad

00:37:03.540 thing about me. How about you not be such a baby? Last week, New York Times op-ed section, big op-ed

00:37:09.860 from, I think his name's Adam Grant, organizational psychologist, far more qualified than I am.

00:37:15.980 And the wrong lessons we're learning from Elon Musk because he's mean. He yells at people. And I did an

00:37:22.300 essay in my podcast this week saying, you know, if you're working for one of the most amazing minds of

00:37:28.080 the past century and he yells at you, maybe it's up to you to decide whether you're going to let that

00:37:33.580 hurt your feelings. Maybe it's not what he says. Maybe it's how you decide to respond. And maybe you

00:37:38.720 should stop being such a wussy. I'm not surprised that that would be the conclusion that Adam Grant 0.99

00:37:46.040 arrives at. I'll leave it at that and let you decide what you think I might, how I might view Adam Grant.

00:37:54.600 But anyways, by the way, he represents exactly, uh, and I'm sure I'm going to get somebody who's

00:38:00.620 going to write to me. Why were you mean to Adam Grant? I don't know who he is, but I certainly

00:38:03.820 know of his positions. Uh, I've always said, uh, I mean, jokingly, but I'm being jokingly only in the

00:38:11.460 way that I say it, but I truly mean it that I have discovered a new species in the animal kingdom

00:38:17.120 and they're called the invertebrate castrati and they represent academia because it's not only that 0.73

00:38:23.420 they are without testicles, both men and women, but they're also spineless because think about it 0.97

00:38:30.040 for a second, Dennis, what's the point of tenure? Isn't tenure the institutionalized mechanism that 0.98

00:38:36.780 ensures that if you are too, you know, lacking in courage to speak, well, now you have tenure that

00:38:43.480 ensures that you will be protected. So you don't even have to be a courageous person to stand up and

00:38:49.320 speak because you are protected by tenure, but I have never in my life seen as much of a constellation

00:38:56.960 of cowards as I have in academia. And, and I mean, I don't say this to be a reverend or to, you know,

00:39:03.880 to be egging on my academic colleagues, but it really is true, right? I mean, I always say whenever I

00:39:09.960 write a list of how to save our universities, there's always one item that says we need to train

00:39:15.220 our future thinkers and leaders to be intellectual Navy SEALs, right? Navy SEALs are physically

00:39:22.940 courageous. They have to be able to withstand certain physical rigor that the rest of us can't

00:39:28.020 do. Well, that's exactly what we should expect from our intellectual Navy SEALs, boldness, right? I mean,

00:39:34.720 exactly the kinds of traits that this guy exemplifies, right? Boldness, non-fence setter,

00:39:41.000 honey badgers, but we do exactly the opposite to that in academia.

00:39:46.060 This is another one of those lesson 11 ironic opposite outcomes because academia, free expression,

00:39:53.720 free ideas and thought, and yet academia and the college campus is where I think the erosion of

00:39:59.320 free speech has been the worst, where it began. The whole trend began there because there are professors

00:40:04.560 on campus who are afraid to speak up if their view is anything other than lockstep Obama libwit 1.00

00:40:10.860 stupidity. And it's so sad to see. And look at what happened in Columbia and now Harvard. What do 1.00

00:40:16.760 you think of this Harvard thing? You know, $50 billion endowment. And you guys are, you know,

00:40:22.200 during the COVID handouts, do you know that our government, U.S., gave universities $115 billion

00:40:30.160 in aid? And this was, I did some research on this, triple what they, any loss they could have claimed

00:40:36.080 because of COVID. And even though the university shut down their campuses and they were running

00:40:41.080 super cheap and charging full tuition for online courses, they got billions of dollars. And Harvard

00:40:46.680 was right there lining up with their handout, even though they have a $50 billion endowment. You know

00:40:51.900 what? Screw you guys. Again, it's my whole Ivy League problem. I'll tell you a story. I don't think I've 0.99

00:40:58.420 ever shared this publicly before. So you're now threading on new territory, Mr. Journalist. You're

00:41:05.440 getting exclusive. So in 1993, as I was entering my last year of my PhD at another Ivy League called

00:41:13.120 Cornell, I had made it to the final cut for an assistant professorship, right? The first rank of

00:41:19.880 professor at Harvard Business School, which just to get to that point is impossible. It's like one in a

00:41:26.000 million. And so I was very keen on it because, you know, Harvard Business School, you know, would sort

00:41:31.800 of be the dream job, even though it would be very unlikely for most people. And certainly one who ends

00:41:37.100 up having the kind of mouth and spicy pen that I have to ever have gotten tenure, but who knows?

00:41:43.020 I remember one thing that really turned me off. Otherwise, I was completely enamored with the glory and

00:41:49.920 glitz of the place. Yeah. I remember I was invited to a joint meeting where I think there were eight

00:41:58.020 sections of introductory marketing class that was taught to the first year MBAs. And the eight

00:42:06.480 professors who taught those eight sections had to get together for a coordinated pedagogy class where,

00:42:14.680 I mean, they literally agree on every single syllable that's put on the board and what's because they

00:42:21.300 want to create the standardized thing. And right away, I thought to myself, that's not going to work with

00:42:27.520 me because I am someone who operates in complete freedom, right? I mean, and I mean, you saw it later

00:42:34.660 in my career when you see me interacting with the public, right? I can't be reined in. It would

00:42:40.560 completely remove any of what constitutes Gadsad. And so even then, 32 years ago, when I went to Harvard

00:42:50.280 and saw the standardized wussiness, I was like, this may not be the right place for me. You just got

00:42:56.340 this as an exclusive, sir. Wow. So you turned them down? Well, I didn't turn them down because here's

00:43:02.460 what happened. No, I wish I could have ended the story that way. But so I think what I heard from

00:43:09.380 inside sources is that it was ultimately down to me and another person. And in a very early

00:43:16.660 manifestation of DI, diversity, inclusion, equity, I heard that that person had gotten the job

00:43:23.320 because she ovulates and I don't. Now, I can't confirm that, but that's what I had heard. So there

00:43:30.760 you go. So no, I didn't turn them down. And to be honest with you, I remember when I didn't get the job,

00:43:35.000 my first reaction is I was disappointed because already the salary differences between what I

00:43:41.280 could have made at Harvard Business School versus anywhere else was quite pronounced. Not that I've

00:43:47.180 ever been driven by, you know, pecuniary pursuits, but, you know, I was a single guy. I had studied my

00:43:53.740 whole life. I'm in my twenties. I'm now going to get out and get a professorship. It was hard not to

00:43:58.960 be crushed by the fact that I had been rejected by Harvard. But so, you know, this, this kind of

00:44:04.420 feeling that there's this in group and, and I'm on the outside looking in, I think certain mavericks

00:44:10.880 have that. I think Elon Musk has that. I think I always have had that, even though other people

00:44:17.640 would look at me and say, what do you mean? You've been in New York with the media for all these years.

00:44:20.800 You are part of it. But no, no, I'm just not. And what happens is because you have no other choice,

00:44:27.040 you're this outsider, you're this pariah. I end up identifying with it even more. I put on that

00:44:34.100 jacket and by golly, that is the suit of armor I now have. You guys wouldn't let me into the club.

00:44:39.440 You forced me into this, but now I'm going to make the most of it. And I'm going to rail and,

00:44:43.440 and call out hypocrisy. A lot of the disapproval of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, it feels like it's

00:44:51.380 the cool kids in the club who, you know, are looking outside down their nose at these outsiders who

00:44:56.840 don't know how to behave, you know? Oh, can I interrupt you? Forgive me. There's a great

00:45:02.060 story that I tell. I shouldn't say great story when I'm the one who's telling the story. So forgive

00:45:06.920 that. There's a story that I tell in chapter one of the parasitic mind, where I had been invited to,

00:45:14.580 you know, arguably one of the top two or three meccas of academia, the Stanford business school

00:45:18.900 to give a talk, a scientific talk on, you know, my evolutionary psychology work and so on.

00:45:24.040 And the night before the gentleman who's sort of hosting me, who's a professor in the business

00:45:30.420 school, uh, looks at me when we're out to dinner and says, Oh, I, I didn't know that, you know,

00:45:35.520 you'd been, uh, very, very often on, uh, Joe Rogan. Uh, I said, Oh yeah, you know, Joe and I know each

00:45:42.040 other well, and I've, I've been many times. And so he kind of puts on exactly the smug look that you

00:45:46.980 were alluding to. And he goes, well, you know, at Stanford, you know, we don't condone that. I said,

00:45:51.380 you don't condone what at Stanford. He goes, well, we don't, we don't do our research so that

00:45:55.880 it could be sexy enough so that we can go and talk about it on Joe Rogan. I said, well, I don't do

00:46:00.200 that either, but doesn't it make more sense for me to be able to do research that hopefully can be

00:46:05.620 exciting enough to share it with 20 million people on Joe Rogan, rather than only publish the paper

00:46:11.580 in a peer reviewed journal. And here's, here are my exact words that is going to be read by your mom,

00:46:16.920 your girlfriend, two reviewers and an editor, and you should have seen his face, right?

00:46:23.620 That speaks exactly to what you're saying, right? It's, it's an ego defensive strategy, right?

00:46:29.140 Why is that bastard Donald Trump ascending to the highest office when I went to all the right 0.98

00:46:36.440 schools and I hold the espresso with my pinky up and I speak with the progressive lisp and I have the 0.99

00:46:43.600 obnoxious New York affectations of Wellesley College and so on. But yet this brash, obnoxious

00:46:51.240 aesthetic injury is now the king of the world. If he's right, it invalidates my exterior, my existence.

00:46:59.300 Well, the people with their pinky extended, they're doing that out of fear. They're doing that out of

00:47:06.460 the need for conformity because they don't want to be called out. And then they see someone like

00:47:12.520 Elon Musk or Donald Trump and some brash person who's not apologizing for their presence, who's

00:47:19.040 not living in fear of all at all. And they, they resent that. And, and, and, uh, you know, the reason

00:47:25.420 women are attracted to men who make them laugh, men with a sense of humor, it's not because it, 0.97

00:47:32.040 you know, it shows they're smart. It's because it shows they're bold and women. I've, I read this

00:47:37.520 someplace. This is not mine. You know, when they see a man in a circle, social circle, willing to step up

00:47:42.520 make a joke, bring attention to themselves only to be disdained by the others in the cool club,

00:47:47.980 you know, women kind of think, man, he's got something going on there. And, uh, and I've

00:47:52.760 always been like that. Uh, and, and I think it's a good, it's a good way to be because we live truer

00:47:59.560 to ourselves. We might get the idea of a simulation and this could be a game. So I'm going to make

00:48:04.860 life as entertaining as hell if I can. I hadn't thought about that particular signal associated

00:48:11.560 with humor. I've, I've written and I actually had a postdoc work with me at one point whose

00:48:17.320 doctoral dissertation was on humor as a sexually selected trait. And, and exactly to your point,

00:48:23.800 the, the, the typical argument is that humor serves as a proxy measure of intelligence, but your,

00:48:31.140 well, I know, I know it's not your idea, but the one that you espoused that it, it actually

00:48:35.920 demonstrates boldness and risk-taking, especially happiness. Yeah, exactly. So I like that. That's

00:48:41.500 very, I do know that's, and I mentioned this earlier, self-deprecation in general and self-deprecating

00:48:48.160 humor is actually a sign of confidence because when you're turning the weaponry of mockery towards

00:48:55.500 yourself, by definition, you have to be someone who is confident in who you are. So for example,

00:49:01.120 I used to be a lot heavier at one point. Now I've, I've lost the weight, but I could still make fun

00:49:07.200 of myself and call myself a beached whale and a, and a walrus and so on, because I, even when I was

00:49:13.580 fatter, I was very confident in my skin. So that's a great point. Now, just in terms of trying to make

00:49:20.260 myself interesting here and take another side of that trade, I used to do this a lot because I come

00:49:25.480 across so forcefully that I felt people just looked at that guy and they think he's so arrogant. So I

00:49:30.960 would undercut myself a lot and make fun of myself. Well, I'm at a party once I've just left

00:49:35.300 CNBC. They wanted to cut my salary 35%. They told me you're just no anchor. We've decided now that

00:49:40.580 we've had you here for three years as an anchor. And so I jumped over to Fox without having to take

00:49:45.260 any pay cut, but Fox business was such a, you know, kind of a distant number two that I was kind of

00:49:50.560 embarrassed of this change. So I'm at this wedding reception for the CEO of the IMAX big screen

00:49:55.740 company. And with this really hot PR woman, she's advised Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. She's

00:50:01.940 amazing. And I keep doing this. Well, you know, it's Fox. I mean, I had to leave CNBC and I'm

00:50:06.300 apologizing, kind of taking myself down. And she takes me off to the side. She says, you've got to

00:50:10.780 stop doing this. I said, wait, I think most people think I'm kind of arrogant. I want to show them I'm

00:50:14.580 modest. So I just, she said, that's fine for a little bit. But at some point, if you keep undercutting

00:50:19.040 yourself, they will believe you and they will take you less seriously because of that. And I

00:50:24.740 stopped doing it quite as much. And the, then I took some training and mind control. That was

00:50:29.160 amazing. 150 hours of training changed my entire life. And I learned there that your unconscious

00:50:35.180 mind, and you would know, this is like a five-year-old child that believes every single thing

00:50:38.940 you say. And so when your unconscious mind hears you say, I'm such an idiot. I so blew that it believes 1.00

00:50:44.840 that. Wow. And we should be a lot kinder to ourself. So even if we're going to take ourselves

00:50:49.520 down, we should do it with sweetness instead of, you know, humiliation. Did you stay in touch

00:50:56.060 with that very bold woman who had the balls to take you to the side and tell you that very 0.99

00:51:02.400 tough feedback? I stayed in touch with her, but she didn't stay in touch with me because once 0.95

00:51:08.120 I was no longer an anchor, once I was no longer in the official media, I had lost salience

00:51:14.480 and usefulness to her. But I like her a lot. And the great thing is always leave your door open.

00:51:20.820 She can come back into my life anytime. And I would welcome her.

00:51:24.160 You know, I thought you were going to say when I, when I said, have you stayed in touch with her?

00:51:29.340 For a moment, the romantic part of my brain said, not only have I stayed in touch with her,

00:51:35.160 I married that woman. Apparently not.

00:51:38.300 I am a journalist who doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story. So I may tell that story

00:51:42.280 next time around. Exactly. Please change the story a bit. That's a white lie. It works. All right.

00:51:47.120 Well, what are some projects that if you, if you'd like, if you feel comfortable, you'd like to share

00:51:52.620 with us that are not yet public, take this opportunity to tell us what is keeping Dennis

00:51:57.920 Neal uptight with excitement. Well, I'm really building what's bugging me, my podcast. I'm really

00:52:04.460 working on building that audience and I'm working on a new deal with Newsmax. Newsmax is doing an

00:52:09.120 extraordinary thing right now. This network has been so good to me. Okay. And they are now

00:52:14.500 hawking my book, the leadership genius of Elon Musk. When you order their, their Newsmax,

00:52:21.260 a magazine subscription, they'll give you a free copy of my book. And Chris Ruddy, the owner of the

00:52:26.960 network told me that typically when they do this promotion for every book, they, they give away

00:52:31.500 two more sell on Amazon. So I want to build the podcast and build the book. And I'm thinking about

00:52:36.500 the next book idea and no one can do it as well as I can. So I'll just tell you what it

00:52:41.360 is. Walmart is a national treasure. Walmart has done more for poor people in this country

00:52:48.680 than $20 trillion in government spending since 1964 and the supposed war on poverty. Walmart

00:52:56.180 is an amazingly well-run business and it makes other businesses even better and has put people

00:53:01.980 through college and has turned people into millionaires. And yet it's a pariah. And again,

00:53:07.120 see, there's something that draws me to that kind of character. And then I wanted to go contrarian and

00:53:12.300 say everything, you know, about this company or this person is wrong.

00:53:17.280 So basically you'd like to write a biography of Walmart.

00:53:20.060 Yeah. You know, the way, um, Bill, uh, Bill O'Reilly has these great, uh, contemporary history

00:53:27.040 books, you know, like the assassination of Lincoln. And he just does it, you know, a clip

00:53:30.760 job with a ghostwriter. I want to do a series of books on business biographies, Amazon, you

00:53:35.860 know, Walmart, you know, these, these heroes of capitalism and how, how they created what

00:53:41.660 they created and what we can do and how we can borrow from that to improve our own lives.

00:53:46.280 I think there's a stencil there, a template that you could, you could work with, right? Because

00:53:50.180 people want guidance. People, we want to get somewhere. There's the poet and the living lives

00:53:56.740 of quiet desperation. I want to push people out of that. I think we need to live more and love harder

00:54:02.600 and live louder. You know, we only get one shot. When, when that book comes out, is this going to

00:54:09.140 be under the auspices of Eric Nelson? Well, I mean, I haven't pitched it to him yet. I probably

00:54:14.160 shouldn't be talking about it, but again, I feel like this is my idea. Someone else can steal it.

00:54:18.420 They'll never do it as well as I will. There's the confidence again. Well, Eric Nelson, I'm sure

00:54:25.160 he has stewarded you through a very good and successful project. People go out and get this

00:54:32.140 book. Dennis, such a pleasure to meet you. Stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline. Come back

00:54:37.080 when the Walmart story is told. And I look forward to my invitation on your show. By the way, I have a

00:54:43.020 series. You, what is it? You, it's called what, what's bugging me? What's bugging me? So I've got

00:54:47.820 a series on X, uh, you know, like on X where I, I just go, it's called things that are pissing me

00:54:55.760 off. I just get on and for like an hour and usually I don't drop F bombs, but this is where I'm somewhat

00:55:03.080 more liberal with my F use. And so, uh, so there is, I understand your, uh, your frustration.

00:55:09.500 Thank you so much for coming on, Dennis. Talk to you soon. I love you, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Cheers.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - April 21, 2025

My Chat with Dennis Kneale, Author of ＂The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_823)

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