AI's Surprising Impact on Jobs, NJ ICE Riots, & Big Trouble in Little Iran

Key Takeaway

AI is currently your most powerful creative partner, not your replacement. The key is treating it like a skilled assistant who knows everything but lacks judgment. Instead of fearing what AI might become, leverage what it is today: a tool that handles research, argues against your ideas, and generates initial drafts—freeing you to focus on the creative decisions only humans can make. Start small: use AI for tasks you dislike doing, then gradually expand as you discover how it amplifies your unique capabilities.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu discusses the current state of AI, particularly Claude Opus 4.8's achievement on humanity's last exam, and argues against AI-driven fear paralysis. He emphasizes that while AI is advancing rapidly and may eventually surpass humans, the current phase offers unprecedented opportunities for creative professionals to leverage AI as a powerful productivity tool rather than viewing it as a threat to employment.

Full Transcript

Transcript of AI's Surprising Impact on Jobs, NJ ICE Riots, & Big Trouble in Little Iran from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Duru Show Live. Today is a very special day. We have the band back together, boys and girls. We got Ryan back on Community and we've got Drew back in his rightful place in the co-hosting chair. I hope you guys all enjoyed the time that we had with Lisa. It really was wonderful. But Drew, you were missed. I'm excited to have you back. And I actually found out why Drew was gone. It was rad. It's for a rad reason.

He produced a short film that was in a film festival. I'm like, why didn't you tell me, Drew? This is good. This is an amazing thing. So, I am very excited for you, man. And so, just to take a second to clap for you. That is awesome. Congratulations. And the [cheering] title of the film, you want to let everybody know your cart. We're doing a couple more film screenings this year, then should be available to the Y by the end of the year. So, year. So, year.

So, let's go. Is it going to be on YouTube? I don't know yet. I don't know. We got to talk about distribution. I need somebody to cut the check first before we go straight to YouTube. Hey, we'll see. We'll see. I'm excited, man. This is good stuff. So, to keep the hits on coming with the good news, some people are saying that Claude Opus 4.8 has achieved AGI. Now, I know not everybody's going to consider that good news, but hopefully by the end of today's episode, I can convince you that the better the AI gets, minus a dystopian vision, the better for all of us.

And we're going to see some of that in a fascinating new report that came out from Apollo's chief economist that indicates that AI is having a surprising impact on the jobs market. We're going to detail exactly what that surprise is. Protests at the Newark ICE facility have surprised me because they actually escalated to the point that they had to put a curfew in place, but then they actually made arrests. So everything seems to have cleared out. Be talking about that. Reports are coming in that the president of Iran may resign due to a takeover by the IRGC.

Not sure yet if that's true, but we'll detail all those out. Rumors are also circulating that Iran might hand over the nuclear dust to the US. And there's enough optimism in all of that that Iran's stock market was actually all green recently. green recently. green recently. Riots broke out in Paris after Paris St. Germaine won the Champions League title. That was a bit madness. And something very weird is going on in the sewer system under Brooklyn as multiple people, like batches of seven or eight people unauthorized with tools have been seen crawling out from manhole covers uh under Brooklyn.

It's wild. So, we'll find out what's going on there. Indeed. And shout out to today's sponsor, Koshi. If you guys want to know what the odds are of certain things happening in the world, make sure that you check them out. Drew and I have been using them for a while now to understand movements and culture. It's very interesting and there's a QR code on the screen. So, check it out if you want to see. They're better than polling as far as I'm concerned. So, it's a fascinating new movement movement movement and you get $10 off your first trade.

So, go ahead. Go. Everybody has a different thing. It's sports, it's crypto, it's politics, it's elections. Whatever your favorite thing hobby is, go bet on that. Go trade on that. Use it for the polling. Use it for the polling. Put save your money, boys and girls. Use it for the polling. Uh, okay. There's been a lot of updates since I've been gone. So, I'm playing catch-up and stuff like that. But AI, I feel like this narrative is just swinging left and right and back and forth and front and center cuz when I left, everybody was getting layoffs.

That's when Meta announced the 8,000. So, we were like, "Oh, it's official now. This is the 16th company that just did layoffs and this is five digit layoffs, not like 40 people or nothing. AI is officially doing something." But now we just got news that that's not the case. Then AI is doing something completely different. So is it just a timing thing? Are we too early? Are we calling it? What do you think is happening with all these different AI narratives now kind of in the ecosystem?

I think what you're seeing in terms of the specific response is people are panicking about the unknown. Humans are fascinatingly predictable in terms of anything new is scary. It's dangerous. uh with very few caveats for hold on a second maybe I don't understand where this is going to go what does pattern recognition tell us and listen AI is a unique beast it really is if it becomes the thing that people think it could become it truly is unlike anything that came before it and so I don't want to poo poo away the fears there however every technological transition that we've seen historically has ended up um following something called Javon's paradox where you would think as um coal becomes more ubiquitous that it's just going to crater um people that are doing jobs that that's going to come in and supplant.

But the reality is that it creates all these other opportunities. People end up using it even more. Uh and so it doesn't end up cratering the whole market. market. market. And so we're seeing something very similar, I think, happen at this stage of AI. Now I think it's very important to break AI into different stages because down the road um it is possible that it becomes self um improving that it is smarter than us and it gets better than us so rapidly that there's that fast take off that people fear and all of a sudden we're left behind and we really don't matter at any level of the stack.

Um, so that is possible, but that isn't what's happening right now. And so I would say do not get lost in the grips of that fear. Understand instead the stuff moves in phases. Understand what each phase is. Have an eye towards the future, but live in the present. And this is the very thing I've had to convince myself to do as a game developer because if I cast my eye too far into the future, I go, "This is pointless. Why am I doing this?" Uh, and you would tap out and walk away.

But the timing of all this stuff is where it gets nearly impossible to predict. Getting the longtail trends right, I think it's relatively easy. Um, but understanding the specifics, the timing, that part's impossible. So, what I had to say to myself was right now today, it makes life better, easier, it allows us to do more things than we could do historically. So just in case that the next phase doesn't come for 10, 15, 20, 30, who knows before it actually reaches that kind of ability to be better than us at everything.

Let me not live paralyzed in that future state. Let me execute right now with what's real today. And so the market response is very few people where I'm at and a whole lot of people living in the future freaking out. And I think that's going to lead to increasing levels of violence. So get ready for that. We certainly have not seen the last of that. Um so there are two things that are happening right now. The first is that Claude Opus 4.8 just scored 57.9% on humanity's last exam.

And if you guys don't know what humanity's last exam is, it is a 2500 question test that nearly a thousand experts came together. They built it specifically trying to be the hardest thing for an AI to pass. that the AI would just struggle and it would grind to a halt. Now, Peter Diamandis said that if an AI were to ever score over 50% on that exam, he would consider it artificial general intelligence. Now, if you don't know him, he's been at the forefront of future um technologies for a very long time.

Is one of the most credible voices in the space. I know him personally. In fact, he's coming on the show today again. Um, and he really does, I think, have a better grasp of the totality of future facing technology than just about anybody out there. And I'll be very interested to hear if he actually thinks that now that Opus 4.8 has at 57.9% beat his benchmark for AGI, if he'll still think that that's true or if now that he's engaging with it, he'll realize that there are some massive limitations.

I'll fall into the maybe camp. The hle is not solvable by simple lookups. That is true. It definitely requires real reasoning. That is true. But the all the AIs right now have a very hard time pushing very far beyond their training data from a take the lessons that you've learned now generalize them and really push them out. But the reality is that they are able to go past their training data. So they're solving novel mathematics now which is pretty wild. So the goal in creating the test was to be the final test, the hardest questions across math, physics, history, medicine that human experts um can think up.

So once a machine has really gone all the way to I mean I don't know if it'll get to 100% but once it's like in the 90s upper 90s then you know that the human intelligence at the absolute frontier like the smartest of the smart people have been matched. Um, but the fact that we are already, even if we haven't reached AGI, we are already interfacing with technology that can do things that so far humans have not been able to do. That is a big deal.

So, you've got protein folding happen, you've got the novel mathematics being solved. Um, you're going to see more coming out in biology, chemistry, etc. All of that. And so, the fact that that is happening, I get why people's ears are perked up. This is definitely something that we want to pay attention to, but right now I would say rather than um look at because there was a mathematician that saw the novel mathematics be solved and he literally was just completely shook and he was like I feel like everything that I put my life into to get good at this thing it's meaningless and I don't know why I've now spent that time and I don't remember him saying like I'm depressed like the vibe of what he was writing was a man who's feeling depressed.

I would say that's the absolute wrong approach. And the way to be thinking about this is that all of us now have access to inc an incredibly powerful tool that you can aim at virtually anything. And by the way, you are important in that chain still. Uh I know I've mentioned this before, but this to me is a really great litmus test. So um one of my deep dives that I wrote, somebody ended up putting, "Hey, thanks for reading the LLM um script." And I was like, dude, I wish that you could just go prompt an LLM and it would output one of my deep dives.

And I'll say if we ever get to the point where AI can you can actually oneshot something that I would read on screen because it so accurately maps my belief system. That would be shocking. Um, as of right now, it is an incredibly empowering feeling to go into this knowing that, okay, there's going to be poor judgment on behalf of the AI. It's very good at a thing that I don't want to spend my time on, which is go out, tell me what's known, what's known in the world, argue with me about my ideas, come back at me, show me the best arguments against this thing.

Because a lot of times I'll think of something and I'll be like, "Oh my god, like nobody's ever thought of this before." Then it's like, "Nope, it's already been thought of. It's known as this." And then I'll say, "Okay, cool. Then what's the best argument against it?" And so you can sharpen your thinking in real time. It's incredible. But through that back and forth, because you as the human are such an important part of this um diad that you end up creating something that is completely novel, it's you plus the AI.

And nobody working with the AI will be able to replicate what you plus the AI will be able to create. And that thing like let that be this gigantic glowing orb in your life. What are you trying to do at work? What are you trying to do at home? Are you involved in a creative endeavor? Because leveraging the AI is not some cheap way out. It's like your writing partner, your thought partner, your assistant in the office, however you want to think about it, is quite literally one of the smartest, most well-educated people on planet Earth.

And they just really want to help you do your thing. It is so incredible. So, I want to infect people with that enthusiasm. I get it. down the road. It may be that this was a brief moment in time, that it didn't last, that the AI does surpass us, but it has not surpassed us yet in ways that are incredibly meaningful. And so, leverage that to do the things you want to do. I just can't express enough how profoundly impactful AI has been both for me as a content creator and for me as a game developer.

It's just absolutely incredible. And so, seeing people paralyzed by the fear, no bueno. So, um, yes, AI is now pushing into truly novel territory. Yes, there are credible voices that are saying it's achieved artificial general intelligence. Yes, it's beginning to be able to generalize beyond just the very strict things that it's taught on. But at the same time, it really does lack something uh that we either don't know how to quantify yet about what it means to have good taste, to be human, to leverage emotion maybe.

Um, and so we have this really unique place. And by the way, it's possible that that unique place lasts a lot longer than we think. So imagine a world where AI gets um inhuman at all of the memory, reasoning, all of that. But because it doesn't have an emotional system, it can't ever choose between this, that, or the other. Which means it will be stuck only with backwards looking pattern recognition. and it will never be able to surprise us with novel creations. If that's the position that we're in, at least for the creative folks in the crowd, that is extraordinarily good news.

It means now all of a sudden you can radically cut the amount of time that it takes you to create something, but you are still incredibly necessary in that process. And that I think is a world that people should be very excited about because not being beholden to like even Drew was saying like I've I've got to find the solution to this distribution problem. I need somebody to cut the check for that. Maybe less and less every day, but he is still necessary as a creative producer that understands what actually makes sense and what doesn't.

Um I I think it's in my upcoming deep dive tomorrow that I cover this. I start losing track of what I've written that has or hasn't come out yet. But there is a really fascinating thing when you start thinking about um the way that the mind works and this was in the context of free will. But let me just put it in the context of creativity right now. If you selectively damage the regions of the brain for emotion, the person will lead a normal life in every respect.

They can solve puzzles. Um they can have an intellectual debate with somebody. But what they can't do is make a decision. It's super wild because we don't actually decide based on logic. We decide based on emotion. And once you realize that, first of all, your life will change dramatically because you'll realize you were constantly in the grips of emotions. Emotions don't always have your best interest at heart. So just keep that in mind. Um, but that if AI is never able to tap into that emotional set and if we assume that emotions have a very powerful evolutionary reason for existing, if AI is never able to mimic an emotional system, then that leaves this uniquely human contribution.

So anyway, I would think a lot about that in this phase. we'll deal with whatever comes in the future. But right now, understanding that that you have that ability, that you are able to um tap into that emotion. I've said many times about creative endeavors that um you could never convince me that something is cool or not cool because I'm having a physical response to it. I have a very strong, as I imagine most of you do, a very strong emotional response to things that I like or don't like.

And so somebody coming along and saying, "No, no, no, secretly you actually do like that." is nonsensical. Um, so there is a very real chance that there will always and forever be output, sorry, that the outputs will always and forever be made better by the fact that there's a human in the mix. Word. Um, let's pull up our KI trade of the week really quick because they're now predicting what will be the best AI by the end of 2026 and Claude is overwhelmingly the favorite. Claude is gangster.

And just for one second, we have to talk about the generational fumble that Chat GPT was because they were the best and brightest. They started this whole AI thing. Y'all wouldn't know what AI was if it wasn't for Chat GPT. And then Gemini and them, they went back and forth. And then Claude, if you can see, it's like a green line going straight up. They the only ones that kept improving and proving improving. So that aside, do you really think Do you want an answer to why that happens?

happens? happens? Oh, why does that happen, dude? So again, humans there is it is so distressing that a company is only as good as the people that it can collect. And once they started having the internal like weirdness and Elon really went on the offensive to try to claw talent away, um they just started losing the people that actually made it. And I remind my team internally and to any entrepreneurs listening to this uh take this like short idea and burn it into your psyche that companies are not nameless faceless organizations.

They are just the collection of the people inside of that company. Um and choose wisely. When you have the right people, they're focused on the right things and they have the right talents. You can pull just about anything off. But if you start losing those people, it's rough, man. It it is rough and as entrepreneurs, you really have to think about that. In fact, you and I were talking about this before we started. It's not like I can just move you out and put anybody else in that chair.

It's whoever we put in that chair makes a different show different show different show because you as an individual, you read a situation differently. You cue off of something that I say differently. You ask a different follow-up. You you have your own worldview. All of that. Same will be true of anybody else that I put in. And so it is really fascinating how even in something like just this show um is influenced by the person sitting there. And so what you're witnessing in this graph is that the talent has just swung over to to anthropic.

And so for better or worse that's where you're at now. Now never bet against Elon. So I'll be interested to see what happens to XAI over time. Especially after this crazy IPO when they get all that money. Yeah. Uh, okay. Now, bringing back to it, there was a couple a lot of chatter in the chat about what AGI actually is. So, I kind of gave the definition like trying to, oh guys, it's just when AI can improve itself, but they was like, well, kind of technically, isn't that self-improving?

So, to you, Tom, what is AGI? And then bringing back in this humanity last exam, what are some of the metrics that they are looking at to queue off whether the it surpassed it or not? not? not? I think everybody will um reject AGI. They'll keep moving the goalpost. I think I'm going to ask Peter the question today. I have a feeling Peter's answer will go something like this. Uh yeah, no, I stand by it. I think that early innings of AGI that it will improve over time, but yeah.

Yeah, this this probably is the beginning of that. Um I think that's a great answer for a podcast, but I think in reality, everybody's going to go this does not feel like a human. And the proxy what people are trying to get at with AGI is it feels like a human. So what does it mean to feel like a human? All right. If I hire somebody new and I bring them in, I explain something to them once or twice and then I expect them to be able to go and do it.

Now, it won't be perfect. It might not be as good as somebody else that has like way more experience, but they'll get it and be like, "Cool, I get where we're trying to go. I understand how to do this." And they'll do it. Um, until AI is like that, people will not have a sense of AGI. So, the number of times that I will explain something to Claude and then it just isn't getting it. And I'm like, "Bro, what the fuck?" like how many times do I have to say this?

And you can tell that it's just it's so glued to its training data, it cannot extrapolate away from that. And so um that is that thing which feels somewhat ineffable somewhat ineffable somewhat ineffable is what people are looking for. So for instance uh I run into this with game design all the time. I want you to take uh this element from here and this element from here. I'll be very specific. Um, I want you to take the body proportions of um, One Piece, but mix it with the more adult style of um, Jiujutsu Kaizen.

Right now, if I'm saying that to an artist, they're going to be like, "Say less, fam. I got you." Because they understand that the vibe of Jiujutsu Kaizen has to do with the colors, the shading, um, all of that. So, you can give me like a really playful character and make it look like that. Now, that's probably a bad example because AI probably wouldn't struggle too hard with that. But when you're taking two ideas like that and you're trying to mesh them together, if I've got to spend like a lifetime lifetime lifetime prompting you with like 72 pages of what it means to meld those two things, that's not general intelligence.

If on the other hand, I say to you and there's just a ton of shorthand that you bring to it because you're able to generalize based on your life experience that I think people recognize is like, "Oh, cool. I can move this person from one thing to another to another to another to another." Now, the really interesting thing is humans actually generalize a lot less in some ways than AI. Like AI on any one topic is going to be as smart as the smartest person. And so all of us are going to be like, "Whoa, that thing's a lot better at that than I am." But our ability to go from topic to topic to topic to topic, meaning like tennis, tennis, tennis, Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. to to to algebra to um keeping your girlfriend happy in a relationship, we're going to be better going through those wildly diverse generalized topics than an AI will. will. will. And it's interesting, the more you talk to AI, it'll bring the tennis things back to the relationship. I'm like, we're not talking about tennis anymore. Stop that. Stop that. Stop that. Uh, but shout out to Telegraph. They had this really cool um MAD cover. When AI is more expensive than people, why replace the people?

I don't know if you seen the new no the news on X about that one company that had told everybody go use AI, go crazy, and they racked up half a billion dollar uh token bill. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's one of those things now where to your point, AI is doing a bunch of different things at levels we've never seen before. A lot of companies are embracing it first and saying, "Yes, go and run it." But then they're starting to use up the tokens. They realize they have to iterate on things.

They realize they have to keep replacing things. And the cost of AI is now being scrutinized. So, we have this cost that it's a little bit more expensive than we thought it was. And then the impending it's going to replace everybody job doom thing. Um, what is now I know we talked about the techn the technical aspect of AI. Now, let's move to how it's going to impact the job, the economy, um, and like the people that it's replacing, quote unquote. Yeah. So, a couple things on that.

One, you can tell what an article is going to be like in the mainstream media. If they make the person look bad visually, then the article is going to go against them. If they make the person look great, then it's going to be totally for. It's hilarious how manipulative that is. Um, so I think a big part of what's playing out right now is that um, there there is a chicken and egg. No, there's a game of chicken being played right now between all of this massive investment into the infrastructure of AI.

Combine that with the fear of the unknown, all of that. So, you've got people attacking the data centers just because they're scared and they think that they're going to be replaced by AI. They're an eyesore. People don't want them in their town, yada yada. um coupled with the reality that AI is just going to keep getting better and better and better. But in any one moment, you can look at it and be dismissive and say, "Oh my god, look at these fools. Like they're, you know, being so stupid in what they're telling people.

The they didn't put any guard rails. These guys are morons. AI is fake. Like this is all bullshit." And if you're a historian, you look at that and go, "No, no, no, hold on. This played out with railroads." railroads ends up transforming America, bankrupts a ton of people, and for a while, I bet it looked really stupid. But now there's not unused lines or anything like that. Like it it literally changed the face of America. Uh it happened obviously in the industrial revolution. It happened in the great electrification.

It happened in the great internetification. All of that same thing. Bunch of companies go bankrupt in the um infrastructure investment phase. And so if you write an article as all of these companies are going broke, if you go, "These guys made bad investments," you're right, history will look back on you and go, "That was the right assessment." If you go, "This technology is bogus. These guys are morons. This is all going to zero." You're going to look like an idiot because the technology is just going to keep getting better.

As it does, always in forever. And so, um, that is the takeaway for me is like, yeah, if you don't put like caps on your employees usage, you're not thinking about incentive structures. So, anytime you put an incentive structure in place, like a leaderboard, people want to climb a leaderboard. If the leaderboard is merely token usage, you've just now incentivized somebody to write a program that gets AI to run all night on the simplest thing that it can generate a token on very quickly because there's no concern.

there's no even check for whether it output anything that was beneficial, but you climb the leaderboard. So, as you design that program, if you're not thinking about perverse incentives, then you're going to end up there. Um, so to write an article and say that was a dumb move as an entrepreneur, yes, that is correct. But to then go, oh, see, told you AI is bogus. It didn't like yield anything. It's like, okay, that's going to be the chattering class is going to give you that answer.

But these entrepreneurs have become the greatest entrepreneurs of their generation because they don't even listen to you on that. They just go, "What mistake did I just make? Got it. Perverse incentive. Understood. What do I need to do to make sure that this actually is high utility that this is outputting something?" And it may take us a year, two years, three years. One to churn over the people that are going to code like an [ __ ] just to climb the leaderboard or the people that are secretly afraid of AI and so they actually want it to fail.

And so they are doing things like that known as malicious compliance. And so I'm just doing what you told me to do, but I'm actually doing it to show you that AI is [ __ ] And they and it will break some weak entrepreneurs. There's no doubt. They'll panic. They'll back off and and that'll be game over. But anybody that has like, dude, the thing that just grounds me on AI, I'm [ __ ] using it. So like, what are you going to tell me that's going to make me go, "Oh yeah, I guess you're right.

It's not working." It's like what? Like I'm using this every [ __ ] day. Uh I've saved myself an insane amount of money. I've increased the amount of topline revenue. That's the part where like I'm I'm like guys, we reduced our headcount, increase topline. Of course, you expect it to increase your profitability because you cut your expenses. But when you decrease expenses, and that increases topline revenue, that's unexpected. And so, and then on the gaming side, it's just it's unhinged how much of an impact it makes.

So, uh, I'm in the very fortunate position of not getting sucked into the rhetoric because I'm just over here deploying it as fast as I can and watching my coders go from, um, not using it at all, like they wouldn't use it. I'm like, the [ __ ] is going on? And so finally we put in something that I was like I need to see how much code you're like just tell me the percentage every day of code written by AI. And at first it was like very little.

And so I was like hey just a reminder like go in and use it. I'll pay any amount right sounds familiar. I'll pay any amount. Don't worry about that. Like just use use. And so finally it was like okay today it was 15%. And then one day it clicked and they were like, "Oh, that thing I don't like doing, AI is just doing that for me now." Oh, this thing that we wanted to try, like a really unique solution that nobody's done before, I just did it using AI.

So now they feel clever because they're just using AI as a tool to solve a problem in gaming that nobody's solved yet. And so that once people start feeling like, "Oh, wait. I can go do something other people can't do. that makes me feel cool. Now AI is a tool to help me feel cool. Like anytime you can make the most selfish thing somebody can do, you're going to get that adoption. And so now all of a sudden it's like my guys are being more aggressive in terms of what they think they can accomplish.

So you've got to be careful about do they feel celebrated? Do they feel like you see them? Do they feel like we're really creating something that's cool? Like in the early days of game development, I had a very different uh relationship with the team because I didn't know what I was doing and they felt like we're making something. This is never going to go anywhere. This guy's just waffling about. They obviously didn't know me well enough to know that I'm not going to stop until I get where I want to go.

But now it's like the game has so much focus and momentum that they're getting excited about being a part of building this game. And so then that just becomes a totally different energy when you try to integrate something like AI. So that's how like if you're trying to contextualize this moment, that's the thing that I would be looking at. Now there's specific data that's been coming out that's well worth looking at. Three years after Chad GPT arrived, Apollo's chief economist went hunting for AI's fingerprints in the US labor data, employment, productivity, inflation.

He didn't find anything. That's the crazy part. zero evidence of a single job that has been lost to AI. Now, I can tell you right now that isn't true. So, how is it that it's hiding that there's something hiding in the data? So, Torsten Sllock, he this is not a hype guy. This the the chief economist. So, he's an ex Deutsche Bank, X IMF, XO OECD, like this guy has all the credentials in the world and he's now running the macro desk at one of the largest asset managers in the world, Apollo.

So his read on the technology is something everybody should pay attention to. And what he's saying in terms of its impact on the economy is the following. This is a quote. AI is everywhere except in the incoming macroeconomic data. So you look at the numbers, weekly employment data shows no AIdriven layoffs. But remember what they're actually looking at. They're just looking at total numbers. So um he's not seeing an increase in productivity. And I agree, right now you're probably not going to see something big because you're still in the malicious compliance phase.

You're still in the people at scale that are actually going to influence the numbers. Like they don't have their heads wrapped around it yet and they probably have a large group of people that are um resistant to the technology, doing everything they can to subvert its deployment. So just this is how this kind of thing goes. Now he's looking at inflation. He's saying it hasn't moved. I think that's a delay in the data because inflation is uh running again. 3.8 was the last that I saw.

Uh so that is up significantly from a couple months ago. Um and the forecasts that are being put out, he's saying that they're tame. So the pen Wharton model puts AI's yearly productivity boost at a fraction of a percentage point through 2035. Now plant that flag. If they're going to point and say that that's where we're going to be at in 2035, I think I'll plant my flag. they're going to look ridiculous. ridiculous. ridiculous. So 9 years of improvement from now, nine years of understanding what AI does well, what it does poorly, getting people that were raised on using AI that are actually being trained how to use it, I think that it's going to be radically different than it is now.

So when you look at that uh and you see that the does not look like the technology is having much of an impact, what do you read? Now my read is that this really is Javon's paradox. So in 1865 economist William Javons caught like a really strange phenomenon. If you make coal engines more efficient and um the theory is that Britain is going to burn less coal. But it didn't burn less coal. It burned far more coal. Uh cheaper power did not shrink demand. It actually made it explode because all of a sudden it was like oh that thing that I wasn't doing because it was just too expensive.

um I'm gonna go do now because it's cheaper. Literally swap in Impact Theory game development and you'll understand. So my first two years the game was so expensive that we were going to have to shut it down. It was just absolute insanity and I was like okay like we're we're never going to be able to keep this pace. So, either we have to scale back to what they call friend slop and just make like a really simple basic [ __ ] game or if we're going to try to do the very ambitious game that we're trying to do, something's got to give.

Swap in coal for intelligence. And that's exactly what happened. And so the intelligence, meaning what I could rely on to create largely art assets, that's been the big save for us. Um, we could leverage AI. And so when that level of intelligence gets cheap, you don't end up using less of it, you start using more of it. So we're now hiring developers and game artisans that we wouldn't have hired before because we would have had to scale back so much. So this has allowed us to keep that scale or something close to it and now employ people that we otherwise wouldn't have employed because we're able to onboard AI.

So, Slock actually also ends up reaching the same frame himself. I think he's less convinced than I am. Um, but nonetheless, he did bring up the paradox. And so, we'll see how it ends up playing out. Um, I think the reality of what's going to happen is you're just going to see a massive shift away from some jobs and towards others. You might see a decrease in entrylevel positions, which will create a problem unto itself. But, nonetheless, over time, you're going to see more jobs being created, more people doing things.

It'll be more fragmented. More people are going to start their own companies. There's no doubt about that. The world is going to look very different on the other side of this. But I don't think that we end up, at least not in this phase of AI. I don't think that we end up with a glut of jobs. But history tells us that people that don't adapt will end up losing work. There will be tons of consternation, tons of protests, and people getting very riotist over the fact that they don't see anything in their future.

But young people and the highly adaptable will begin shifting over to this new economy just as we did with the industrial revolution, electricity, internet, all of it. It's just played out so many times. And I think we're going to see the same thing with AI. with AI. with AI. I think this might be a to America's problem, though, because right now we're saying that, if I heard you right, that AI didn't technically wipe out jobs. It's replacing jobs. It's re it's reshuffling the deck, but the deck is still 52 cards.

And then I have friends who are who've been unemployed and can't find a gig because they are used to being literally a close friend of mine. He's used to being like VP of sales. So I manage people. I manage teams and things like that. And I was like, "Yeah, there's no more people managers no more. It's either you are doing the thing or you own the company. Everything in the middle is kind of gone." So how do you rectify what people are seeing on the streets, the headlines that we're reading, and then this economist report that's saying, "Well, technically it wasn't really jobs.

We're still broken even. it's not that bad when Meta was like see 7,000 people because of AI and that was like their bailout of statement like how do you rectify those two truths? truths? truths? Uh I don't think you have to integrate them. I think that there is going to be a bloodbath of people like your friend that um refuse to adapt or accept that oo I have to take five steps backwards and hopefully over time I'll be 15 steps ahead but that five steps backwards is just too brutal.

um for any anime heads in the crowd. There's a studio called Studio Mappa and one of their lead directors, I believe, um was at the studio for it was like 39 years, man. Like a long time. And he recently got fired and he said my um my severance was zero yen, so nothing. nothing. nothing. And he said, "I'm starting at a new studio, but I'm coming in with the mind of a beginner." And I'm like, I'll be interested to see if that guy and I mean, if you've been somewhere for over 30 years, you're old as [ __ ] So, this guy's probably in his 50s and he's coming at it like, yeah, I'm I I'm good at a thing.

That thing is still valuable. This company doesn't know me as well, so they're probably not giving me the same opportunities, but if I'm actually good at this thing, then I'm going to drive it forward and I will climb up the company. And that will be the question put to everybody is yeah we may just now live in a world where this is about reinvention. I think about this a lot with me as a YouTuber. Now maybe I am um more prone to this than the next person.

But at the height of my YouTube success I pulled the team aside and said I'm not going to keep doing this. I'm like it's not interesting to me anymore and so I'm going to be rebooting the channel. And uh to say that that caused consternation would be an understatement. It it hurt our revenue for well over 18 months. And um you know it was pretty wild and I still get comments to this day like every now and then the algorithm will reach somebody from phase one and they'll be like oh remember when this guy like he was cool and he used to talk about it won't say mindset but that was the drill.

the drill. the drill. And And And as if Kaizen takes off, that will get more and more integrated into what I do. And there'll be another um reinvention. And I think that's just a world that we live in now. AI moves so fast that everybody's going to have to reinvent themselves. And you'll have these phases where it'll be like, okay, this is what I'm focused on now because this is what the world values now. But the world may not value that same thing in seven years.

And there are going to be some people who hate that in the extreme and they will just hunger for AI to give them everything and they will vote for policies that are nanny state and other people are like no no no I'm like this is fun. I like the fact that I can go from one thing to the next to the next. Um and so we'll see. But it is the ability to adapt is the thing that will get people get people get people say that's a really good point because we are coming out of an economy that was you work here for 30 years you get a gold watch and you're taken care of for life pension then that turned into well you could do you might bounce around every two or three years then you're going to find your niche and you'll be there for the last 20 and now it sounds like the new economy that we're going into is every four to seven years you might have to completely change what you do.

do. do. Yeah. what you do is the right answer because it meaning the levers that you pull. pull. pull. So I saw a really great quote, forgive me for not remembering who said it, but it's really brilliant and they said um don't think about who you want to become, think about what you want to do. What do you want to do? Because that's really the thing that defines the quality of your life. Are you doing a thing on a daily basis where doing the thing is interesting and engaging to you?

um it's feels like a good way to spend your time because even if you're aimed at the right thing, if you're not doing the thing on a daily basis, then it's not going to be um enjoyable. So the um guy behind Take 2 Interactive, the CEO, doesn't play games, doesn't care about games. And so I'm like, "Oh, this is just a guy that like he's like a I don't think he is a turnaround CEO, but he's that kind of CEO where it doesn't matter what the product is.

Just he understands the systems, the capital um allocation part of the job so well that Yeah. Yeah. Drop me in here, drop me in there. It doesn't really matter. I'm going to thrive because I know how to run a business." And I let the artisans go make the GTA 6. And I would hate that. I'm the exact opposite of that kind of CEO. I am on the product side. I'm on the marketing side, the storytelling side. Like, I want to be in the thing. I have to care about the thing.

Um, and so I'm in one of the better phases of my life now. Shout out to Andrew Press, who I hope hears this. um largely because of finding him and bringing him on as COO, I've been able to spend more time being the product, writing the deep dive, doing the research for the lives, um working on the game, like actually working on the game. And so that has um been transformative for me in terms of the levers that I'm actually pulling. So people need to think way way way more about that.

And so as AI shapes how we move through our careers, be really thoughtful about what levers am I going to pull? to pull? to pull? Yeah, that's good. Uh Ryan, I want to bring you in this as our resident young person. Uh because I just talked about kind of the exchange of culture that we're kind of I'm living through the transition from pension to now every four years I'm have to find something else. else. else. How dare you? From your perspect I have to say I really hate it.

It's like yes this is the right conversation but Drew Lord knows I want to buck that trend. Anyway, barring you becoming a big-time film producer that we couldn't possibly afford. That caveat aside, uh, no, but so Ryan, from your perspective, then, what, uh, do you feel the pressure with you and your peers of like, I'm going to do this forever, or is it like, hey, man, I'm just trying to pay my rent tomorrow and I'll figure it out later. out later. out later. In terms of like your day-to-day job, your like your career, your aspirations, like what do you see your how do you see it unfolding over the next 30 years?

I feel like in your 20s, and maybe this is just universal, but I feel like in the 20s, it's just survive. Um, I feel like most of what I make decisions are are how am I going to get money so down the line I don't have to worry about this stuff. this stuff. this stuff. Um, so it is a lot of just dayto-day get the paycheck kind of thing in in a lot of ways. But at the same time there's ways you know outside of it I try to grow my career.

Gotcha. And then for your like friends and like peers and things like that are they in more of the corporate side are they more creative? Are they are they able to find jobs and work and stuff like that or is the unemployment kind of hit them as well? unemployment. I of all my friends, I've got about like 15 friends I keep in touch from college, only three of us have gotten jobs. Oh, wow. And we've been graduated for a year. So, and and that's like two of those were through their family who already worked at companies and mine was just by chance.

So, everyone else has just been applying since graduation. It's just impossible cuz you get you don't get like you'll go through three stages of interviews and then they'll still end up ghosting you for no reason. Okay, this is me on my old man rocking chair. So I'm I'm disclaimer but are what what what were their fields? Are we talking about like 12 art history majors or some of them a variety? So uh some are medical field, some are psychology, summer art and the two who got jobs um who have it through family were both computer science.

So there is a vast variety of like arts and things. Um and I guess I would be more considered arts. Um so just I'd say it's a good 50/50 for my my friend group though. Copy. though. Copy. though. Copy. That is wild. Very very interesting. So, here's a listening to you talk, first of all, makes me feel ridiculously old, but uh you guys, your generation has a meta awareness that we didn't have. You might have started to have it, but we didn't have it at all.

None of us knew. We were all going through the same thing in our 20s. The idea of a quarter life crisis hadn't been defined yet. That didn't get defined till I was probably in my early 30s. And so that whole idea of like, oh yeah, the world is complicated and it's hard to figure out and there's something about being in your 20s where you're just trying to stack knowledge and get a lay of the land. Um, and you guys are aware of it. We weren't. I would just go home and be depressed and like what am I doing with my life?

I didn't have a sense of like, oh, this is normal. You've got to figure it out and then you're going to start generating some momentum. momentum. momentum. I was a telemarketer. So I went to the most prestigious film school on planet Earth at the time. I mean like undeniably the most prestigious. So, go to the Harvard of film schools and graduate second in my class by the way, not some slouch, like really thinking I'm about to do this and uh I'm working as a telemarketer and I'm like, yo, how far have I fallen?

Like, I don't have any. And then at one point I was selling insurance doortodoor, pure commission. Like, it was wild. And so, you just feel lost like where the [ __ ] am I going? But none of that meta awareness. So there is some like if you guys have a an attitude of well I'm either going to do a thing with my degree or I'm just not going to get a job. Like that wasn't an option. So my dad sent me for the five months leading up to um my graduation.

He's like five more months, four more months, three more months. Meaning he with the the rent check like when you graduate that's it. like you get a job final answer. And after that day, my parents have never given me a dime. In fact, I for a while was helping supplement my mom's income. So, it was it's just a different time. There was no I didn't want to move back in. They would have let me obviously, but I didn't want to move back in. Uh I wanted to make it work.

And so, no, you take a job somewhere. I had that revelation literally this weekend cuz I I had to like find some pants. So I walked into like a H&M and the two three people behind their desk on the H&M, one of them was in their 50s, one of them was in their 40s, one of them was probably like 30ome and that's when I kind of took a step back cuz I had friends after college who didn't get a job immediately. I know I'm thinking of some of my frat brothers off the bat.

They went to the mall and got jobs and then they went into the real but now those intermediate jobs are now grown like I don't want to say grown-ups but like people are now in those jobs now. So the college people can't even get in there. So it seems like the transitional jobs, the insurance, the door to door, the things that we used to this is what I have to do until I figure out the thing that's going to start my career. There are now people in there that that's their career and they have I will be so interested to know why that's happening because one, we didn't have YouTuber as job.

So none of us were like, I'm going to go try my hand at youtubing. So that was off the table. There was no gig economy. So it wasn't like you could be a Door Dash person or an Uber driver on the side. So it was like you had to get a job. So you either had a full-time or a part-time job. And so for my generation, the idea of going and working at the mall was like that's what you did. It was like your first job was going to be at the mall or at the um a fast food restaurant.

restaurant. restaurant. That that was just like where you got your jobs. And so I remember there was always that time your parents would be like summer's coming up. Like you need to go walk the mall and pick up job applications. And so I was so lazy. I did for like the CD store or whatever, DVD store, and if I got rejected there, then I was like not even sure what I was going to do. And so I always ended up working at a paint factory because my dad worked for a paint company.

Uh and so yeah, it's it's such a different time. Like there's so many sort of gig ways. Even Etsy, just none of that existed. And so you really felt like I've got to somehow plug into the world of jobs, if you will. There was no like I can go try my own thing, make my own thing. That was not real. Yeah. Interesting. Um, Scuttle in the chat said, "The black market is always hiring." So Ryan, if your friends really want to want to want to really tough, really tough, really tough, they they may already be there.

This one. Wait, they go. All right, we got some super chats. We got a couple. Yes, we got a lot to get through. Super chat. Super chat. Super chat. First up from Marushia Dark. As a New Jersey native, I've been posting updates in the Discord about ICE, crime, Islamic uh enclaves, etc. It's not just uh New York, but Patterson, Clifton, Fort Lee, Pal Park, etc. Glad to see ICE, DHS, and Nick Sorder there. Go harder. Fort Lee is a little crious. I don't know what he talking.

I would be very interested to hear. He said it's it's not just Newark. What's its like? um is your read that uh left-leaning people are losing their minds? Um one thing I will remind everybody, so when you look at this stuff, take the assumption that these are loving, well-intentioned people that really believe what they're saying. And so from that perspective, hopefully it will get people to play the game at the right level. So, um, I'm definitely a law and order guy, so I don't want to see people acting a fool, but I'm also a freedom of speech guy and I want to make sure that people are able to say the thing that they need to say.

Uh, and so I actually thought the way that this was handled was pretty clean. Uh, let people protest during the day, put the curfew in at night. Uh, if they stay, that's somebody who's really trying to say, "You can't tell me what to do." Uh, and the law is there to precisely tell you what to do. And so then to clear the people out that refuse to go like, "Yep, that all felt like good." Um, so yeah, I'm very curious to know, Marushia, what you want to see because I think we're in a cultural battle and I think that we started losing the cultural battle decades ago and it will be to the absolute just detriment of people also on the left.

Like I think this is an ideology that eats everybody when it goes too far. There there is a landmine that I just cannot stop myself from dry humping. I did not I didn't even pull it because I'm like, "God damn it, do I want to keep talking about this?" Clearly, I do. there there is um you're going to hear more and more talk about the feminization of culture and how when um the um the um the I think it is largely driven by women but I think it requires weak men to get out of hand that the harder we go into feminine traits that are unchecked that we're going to see more and more problem and I think that happens that started happening so many decades ago that I don't know how easily we're going to pull out of that spiral.

Um, so yeah, we'll see. But anyway, make sure that you're teasing apart the ideas so that you've got a lot going on there from uh whether this is actually about Muslim immigration, which I think or Islamic, I think you're very clear about using that word. Uh, that is a debate. The way that we protest is a debate. left leaning ideology running unchecked is a debate. Um and then also people geographically separating such that blue states just reinforce reinforce red states reinforce reinforce and that leading to madness on both sides is a debate period.

Marishia Dark again with the 20 thank you for the 40 total. Sales is the only thing that generates revenue but what to do if don't have the do if what to do if don't have the temperament for sales and marketing assume you can't just hire for the role. Also any advice for a visionary without any ex uh executive and vice versa. So yes I do. So to take the last part first and don't click off this I'll need to follow up. Um okay so if you're a visionary but you don't have anybody to help you.

The hard reality is you're only going to get your company off of the ground if you're able to do that job sufficiently when there's no one else around. So, when we launched Impact Theory, um I had to do all of the operations that Lisa couldn't handle uh myself. And so, it was me on the phone with the IRS trying to get um our EIN number and all of that set up. And it just is what it is. And that does not speak to my personality. And I had to go way out of my way to make sure that I had alarms and all that set up uh to make sure that I followed through and got everything across the finish line.

And uh thankfully Lisa was handling all the systems creation which she is far better at than I am. But anyway, you just have to do it. Uh and so with or without Lisa um those things were going to have to get done. And so think about that. If you're not able to at least hit the bare minimum um then you're not going to be able to run your own company. There's there is nothing other than you have to develop the skill set enough to get you off the ground.

Um, once you understand that every company rises to the incompetence of their CEO, the kinds of people that they can attract, their ability to get something off the ground in the beginning, all of that becomes very real very fast. So, um, get good enough at those other things to get something going, to get the momentum going. Um, if you're not drawn to sales and marketing, then you've got to be able to contribute to people that do the sales and marketing. You've got to be able to create something that's better because there's really only product, process, and people.

So, if you're not able to fill into or slot into one of those lanes, you're just not going to be able to contribute. So, um I will often get that question from entrepreneurs. I'm not saying that the following is you. I'm saying this kind of thing comes up a lot, which is um I'm not good at those things. I don't want to get good at those things, and I still want this to work out for me. But the reality is that the only companies that end up succeeding either have partners.

So you may not be good at it, but you've got somebody else that is um that can do all of the things that need to be done or you have one person that just through sheer force of will and the ability to attract talent is able to get this thing off the ground and moving. And the 94% of companies that fail don't have that. But that's why 94% of companies fail. And so I can't make being smart enough. I can't make being a good person enough.

I can't make having vision enough. You have to execute and that's just the hard reality to building a business. Question Things says, "In regards to Friday's episode, yes, you are making a difference, Tom. Even if it's small, it's not small. It should still be worth it. That's our purpose to move the needle in the right direction." Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan, I eternally leak that anxiety, but I don't remember leaking it on Friday, so I'm not sure what he's referring to. Um, but given that I know that's a part of my personality, thank you.

Um, that's much appreciated. much appreciated. much appreciated. Quark DY says, "Have you looked at the flatbed truck freight data and how it's changing at maxamomics?" I have not. Yeah, I just looked it up. I I don't have no idea, but interesting. Say more. Take check out their I'm very interested what it reveals. Patrick Wrightson says, "Good morning, guys. Yeah, sophisticated enough models probably beyond the LLM stage will absolutely have integrated emotional sub layers probably profoundly analogous to humans at least going to be a wild feature.

feature. feature. I'll be interested to see if they can actually pull that off. Patrick, um I think they're going to have to do something like that and I think they have to um bury morality inside of there so that it is self-limiting. I think that was what nature realized was like, yo, it what the populations will collapse once you have a psychopath that is unchecked. So, if you just have a population of psychopaths, they'll self-destruct. I really believe that's true at the societal level. Now, if you don't have a psychopath, whatever group does have one, they'll send their psychopaths in to murder you, and then they'll come in behind them uh with their compassion and rebuild something, having taken over basically all of your women.

Uh, and so you get how that all ends up working out. So, psychopaths are necessary, but they should be a very small part of the population. The rest of the population should have morality in place to check um each other from their own abuses so that there's a self-limiting thing at the individual level. And if AI doesn't have that, I think it will run a muck. David Mera says, "Drew, what are you spinning right now, brother? Music." Ah, the only right answer. Iceman. Um, never heard of Iceman.

What's Iceman? Drake's new album. Three new albums. Yeah. Good. The other two you don't need to listen to. Oh, I haven't I haven't heard. Uh Iceman is good. There's a couple Bengals on there. Um Black. And so you forgive you don't care that he lost the battle. That's like saying my team lost the game yesterday, so I'm going to stop supporting them. Yeah, it's not. Okay. I really thought his career was over. That's the end of that game. Drake left the lights on. Kept the lights on in hip-hop for decades.

So like you can't just cancel him over a weekend. But Kendrick is a great rapper and he's having a good moment. And Jay-Z just did a com concert emulating Kendrick's whole style. So Kendrick is that really? that really? that really? Yes. Yes. Yes. It was uh it's that's another thing. That's the next thing. I got to listen to Jay-Z's Roots Picnic Freestyle. Um Lola Young just dropped an album or a single and I love British emotional rap uh R&B. uh R&B. uh R&B. Um yeah. Um yeah.

Um yeah. Do you think Jay-Z is still relevant? Um he does a great job of keep staying in the conversation. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. So when Drake was blowing up, he did a song with Drake. Then DJ Khaled had that summer. He was doing songs with DJ Khaled. Like I said, Kendrick has his moment. So now there's Jay-Z with long hair and like fatigues and like he it's just a very Kendrick coded performance. So that way people are into that can like oh interesting. This is how Jay-Z's in the Kendrick.

So he red he really re um invents himself. invents himself. invents himself. Invents himself. Thank you. He reinvents himself. himself. himself. All right. Jay-Z's my favorite rapper. I was so afraid he was going to get like taken down by the whole Diddy thing. I was like, "Oh, no. They they're they're peers, but they're not the same in that." Diddy was always a freak boy. That but that's that's neither here nor there. But that's what I'm listening to. Maven, thank you for asking. If you got any recommendations, drop it in the chat.

Uh Quirkdy again says, "GPT is still better than Claude for programming and with less tokens. Have a look at deepswench, deepswench, deepswench, which is more accurate than the swbench." swbench." swbench." Oh, deep versus Yeah. Uh which is very flawed if you look at the prompts given to models and models cheating. Hm. Interesting. So, we have switched all of our coding over to Claude, but I'd be very interested to talk to um our team to see have them do like a sideby-side comparison, especially if it uses less tokens.

So, I don't think we're not doing enough that we hit our token limits. Nobody's reported that to me anyway, so may not be a big deal, but I'd be curious to know how big of a difference. difference. difference. And lastly, Jonathan Garcia says, "Good morning. How do you feel about California passing the Stop Nick Shirley Act? Act? Act? So, I haven't done a deep dive on this, so I might look at it and go, "Okay, listen. It's not as it's being portrayed." As it's being portrayed, it makes me want to flip the table over and grab somebody because the it the amount of fraud that we've already uncovered is crazy.

Everybody here, the problem becomes when only 50% of people pay any taxes whatsoever, then 50% just aren't going to care. And I wouldn't expect them to. It doesn't impact them personally. But when you've got 50% uh of the people that are being defrauded, um and by the way, the people that aren't being uh that aren't paying taxes, you're still having an inefficient government. And so, yeah, this one to me is crazy. I think as government incentives to get bigger grow out of hand, you begin parisetizing not only against the taxpayers but against the citizens because they're not getting the services that they could get.

And so if we were to actually get rid of the fraud, um you're going to need journalists to go in it. The modern-day journalist does not look the way old school journalists look. And so the fact that they don't like that it's some awkward kid uh from, you know, the Mormon faith, like that's wild to me. Like let him do his thing. Let anyone do their thing. There is obviously rules and laws in the books already to stop people from harassing somebody or um you know making them unsafe.

So just if somebody is actually crossing the line, then prosecute them on the laws that already exist. But don't make it harder to investigate fraud. That's crazy. This is part of the reason that we have freedom of the press and the fact that people don't universally want to end fraud is insane. Insane. Insane. Insane. All right. Um, shout out to the other two super chats, Dan Clark and Ganja. We'll get you guys at the bottom of the hour hour hour when you were shouting out super PACs.

I was like, what? Um, yeah, super chat. There we go. Words. Uh, let's jump over to the Iran war. Um, Donald Trump has a announcement for everybody. He says, "Hey guys, Iran really wants to make a deal." Wait, really? I had heard that. And it'll be a good one for USA and those that are with us, but the Democrats and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans understand that it is much tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate when political hacks keep negatively chirping at levels never seen before over and over again.

That I should move faster or move slower or go to war or not go to war or whatever. Just sit back and relax. It would all work out in the end. It always does, President Donald J. Trump. So, don't worry that your gas prices are high, guys. It's all going to work out in the end. Don't worry about the straight that was open, that we closed, that is now closed, that we open, that was now closed again. It's all going to work out in the end.

Do you feel reassured by Donald Trump's uh true social tweet? social tweet? social tweet? I do not feel reassured. My my beef with this is one, um, it it it it's whiny. Now, I understand certainly that people chirping at you constantly, it does get very obnoxious. And as my poor wife found, our comments are full of people who either think I'm evil or dumb or whatever. Uh, and if you let it, it really will drive you nuts. And I bet if I went back and looked at some of the first episodes where I was just always fighting with chat, uh, I would be like, "Okay, listen.

You're getting a bit whiny. Like, let it be what it is." Um, so from that perspective, I I hate that. Um, I simultaneously have found Donald Trump funny for the way that he engages and lament the death of like presidential. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so right now I'm in a mourning the death of presidential mood. This one is not nearly This isn't funny at all. And so uh if you're going to be like that sort of anti-presidential, at least be funny. This one is not that.

So look, Iran is a shitow right now. Do I think that um any of us know enough to know the pace at which he should be negotiating? No, I do not. Um, so on that side, whatever. The thing that bothers me the most about this tweet is the Democrats thing. So, as president, you have to find a way to unite your base. base. base. And when, sorry, not your base, your country. And so, when you're president, like you represent everybody. And right now the populist moment, which I have repeatedly pointed out how much I [ __ ] hate.

Uh it's just all about the other team's a bunch of dumb asses and I hate them all and all of that. Um so I really Yeah, I just hate that. So um name calling is precisely how he got into office and I hate that. There are some reports though that there is a little bit of turmoil on the Iranian side of this war. It's still early reports, reports, you know, disclaimers. for taking it as sources say, but that could be a bright spot in all of this if this can actually wind out out out or it could be a mess.

We're about to see. So, Iran's president just tried to walk away from the job supposedly. supposedly. supposedly. Uh, Massud Peskian reportedly handed a resignation letter to the office of the Supreme Leader. Supposedly, the stated reason, this is according to a London-based um group, Iran International, he's trying to walk away because he no longer has power to govern. He says that the revolutionary guard has taken the country out from under him. Now, Iran right now is in a succession vacuum. This is an incredibly dangerous time. When the Supreme Leader was killed back in February, um his son Moaba was pushed forward as the successor and a chunk of the regime's old guard never accepted him.

And this is a problem with regime changes is you never know who's going to fill that vacuum. I think most of us here in the West wanted to see the the quote unquote people of Iran rise up. I will remind us all that I'm sure Iran is divided in the same way that America is divided. And so, do we really even know what that means? Do we have a sense of how many people were often asked to believe that 85 or 90% of the people are on the quote unquote good side.

They just want their country. They want to look like they looked in the 70s. They want broad freedom. They want to pursue economic interests. They want a secular state. I just don't know if that's true. Maybe it is. Lord knows. I would love that. That would be incredible. But it may not be true. And even if it is true, if the group at the top is willing to be extraordinarily extraordinarily extraordinarily violent, then they'll be able to keep even a mass of the country down. So reports right now are describing a military council of senior guard officers making the real decisions in the country with the elected government just basically being locked out.

And the guard itself is now starting to fracture. So you've got the IRGC that are willing to be violent, willing to control the country by force, but they themselves are being torn apart by factions. So you have uh one commander Ahmad Vahidi who runs one faction, parliament speaker Muhammad Beggar uh Galabah runs a rival one and then the security chief maneuvers between them. So all of this is rumor right now, but make no mistake, if there is this kind of turmoil playing out. We have no idea how this is all going to end up.

And so this could end up making any functional negotiation impossible. Which means that this is going to continue to spiral and be a problem. And ah man, I'm going to say if the people haven't risen up by now, the odds that they're going to are very low. And that's the problem. If you really So look, we don't know how many people were killed. I've heard everything from like 2500 of the protesters killed to 45,000. That is a gigantic swing. But you can imagine if the numbers even anywhere in the middle, if let's say 10 or 15,000 of your most hardcore, brave people that are leading the marches out in the street when you know that it's hyper dangerous.

If they were all murdered, then that revolutionary energy is going to have been zapped out of the people very, very quickly. And so that's just incredibly brutal to think that maybe there could have been a moment, but they were just all killed. So Tyrron, of course, is denying that any of this is playing out. the officials say that the president is working and the the call behind the scenes to say that he's about to uh back out is just built to sabotage the ceasefire talks. So, I don't know.

We we will see what ends up coming of all of this. Um but again, right now what's going on there is extremely uncertain. uncertain. uncertain. Will it end up back in violence? I think there's a low chance of that. But are they going to try to just economically strangle them to death? And when I say violence, obviously there are strikes happening right now during the ceasefire. Um but they are um call it tit fortat. So it's not a gigantic bombing campaign. That's what I'm talking about.

So um we'll see how this ends up playing out. I'm expecting a longtail shitow. longtail shitow. longtail shitow. And it's only going to get worse. According to the SVP of Exxon who's saying we're approaching unheard of inventory levels. I mean of oil basically being bad. Yes. I mean really really low levels. You can debate whether that's going to hit those really low levels in two or 3 weeks. Once you get that point then you'll see prices shoot up. The price of physical brand oil caros will spike to 150 to 160 per barrel.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. When inventories hit all-time lows in coming weeks, the executive said when the price gets to a certain level, demand destruction brings it back into balance. So we're at a point right now where we've been hovering around the 90s to 100s topped 110 came back down. We've been in kind of that window. They're they're expecting a what is that a 40% increase over the next couple weeks that should drive gas prices who knows where. So with this war that's happening yes on the on the actually boots on the ground you know we don't want to see any more death or violence but economically when brood when crude when Brent oil is that high that's going to have ripple effects across the entire industry no across the entire globe it that will depending on how long it lasts take you from a momentary recession to a global recession if it drags on for 6 12 months of having that kind of elevate it's It's so inflationary that as he said, you'll get the demand destruction.

That's exactly what a recession is. Is people just start going, I'm just going to hold my money back. So, I don't know where this is going. And then any company that's in a weakened position or is extremely exposed to energy costs, poof, they just stop existing. Um, so we saw early weakness when Spirit Airlines went out of business. So, you'll see more weirdness in um places that have really thin margins that are really exposed to energy costs really starting to struggle. So yeah, I mean, buckle up if this doesn't get done.

Also, if this isn't done by midterms, forget it. Like now you're going to see a flip there, that agenda dies. Uh, and so yeah, we'll see what happens on the other side of that. With everything going on, what is kind of your gut read about this straight or her Iran situation? Like I know early talks we didn't know what was going on, but now I felt like we kind of got we're starting to hit the same loops in the news releases, the articles. Trump is starting to backtrack, get back.

He's starting to get into his his kind of loop. What's your read now of this Iranian war situation straight to Hammoose? Where do you think it goes? I think a lot of it is going to depend on what happens at the midterms. Let's say that Trump, let's do a Trump wins scenario. scenario. scenario. He retains a majority. Um, what you're going to see is I think Iran drags out forever and ever. if he's able to get to the other side without a resolution. So it doesn't resolve, but for whatever reason, he's able to convince people that he's still the guy that you want to trust.

And so, um, he holds and you'll see him do everything he can to make the US the world's gas station. He'll people will start going, "Okay, yeah, everything is so uncertain in the straight of Hormuz." Largely, we've stopped talking about the insurance side of this, but that's still a big part of this. The insurance companies are just like, "Yeah, we're not going to [ __ ] with Iran." So, in this scenario, I'm like, insurance companies still read Iran's unstable. This is maybe a long-term stalemate, but we don't trust them not to bomb people or the expense just gets way too high.

And so, uh, the GCC basically retreats from the US. The US because they just can't afford to invest. They've got to focus here because remember this was all about getting the GCC countries that have accumulated a massive amount of wealth to point that at US investments. So, that begins to weaken. you get the um US becoming the gas station, beginning to up our production that we um do anything and everything that we can to be pro oil. Maybe we even get Alberta out from under Canada.

We develop a relationship with them. And so that connection becomes like this um top part of North America um just oil massive production. We go crazy. And because of our geography, we end up being relatively protected from all of that instability. And we just as the US end up in a pretty strong position. We don't hate that China sort of gets into a weird position. I think at some point China may have to step in to at least stabilize an economic relationship with Iran, which then could power them if the US leaves um the Middle East and is just like, "Yeah, we're just kind of throwing our hands up." That [ __ ] could get weird in the Middle East.

And so you get this weird shifting of power where the US refocuses everything back here in the US, sorry, in um the North America through South America corridor, our hemisphere, and we really just plan our routes, say this is our thing. We continue to try to have at least an economic relationship with the GCC countries. I don't think they're just going to cut, bait, and run. But I think it's going to be difficult for them to position themselves as the protectors of the GCC given that we walked in, created all this [ __ ] trouble because this is a scenario where we bail.

Uh, and it's just this long-term stalemate. So anyway, there's so many question marks over that. This is not me saying, "Oh, yeah, this is definitely what's going to happen." But I think all of that is a very plausible read on this becomes a very destabilized region that really forces China's hand to go in build an economic relationship tell China to chill the [ __ ] or tell Iran to chill the [ __ ] out that things have got to get through but they start charging a toll maybe not on China but on everybody else everybody else starts going yeah we can't get proper insurance we don't want to pay tolls so we're going to go over here whether China lets the tolls sit or not is a bigger question mark because um they have other choke points where if people start charging tolls everywhere becomes a very non ideal situation and if America positions itself as the one place that doesn't charge tolls then it's like more focus goes there.

Um so anyway I think ironically America walks away from this economically in an okay position if pro- energy people are still in um positions of power. if he loses at the midterms and the uh green like energy energy comes back and now it's all like we're they're just quietly regulating us out of the game crying about look what Trump did in the Middle East this is his fault inflation starts going crazy we start running policies that make us look like what Germany did to themselves which is [ __ ] insane but nonetheless they've done it and caused massive economic damage all across Europe with um green energy policies So yeah, that one would be I think economically disastrous and would make would make it such that what happened in Iran, which we created that problem, but that problem ends up biting us in the ass in a way that it actually could have been beneficial for us, however grotesque.

however grotesque. however grotesque. I don't know. There's a lot of ifands in Yeah, look, nobody should take that as a like. This is probable. That's crazy. We'll wait and see what happens. But RIP to the gas tanks, man. We I'm going to start walking to work. This was crazy. I was I I got tripped over the six uh the $6 thing. I was gone for three weeks. Came back. I was like, "Oh, it it got more expensive." Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm going to walk now. Um and to those struggling, I feel you.

Empathy, empathy, empathy. Um sorry about that. Voting has consequences. All right, let's do a tale of two uh riots, I will call them. First, let's go over to Newark in these ice uh facility riots. We talked about it briefly earlier. There's just a lot of energy and motion outside. I think this is the same energy that we've seen in Minnesota and other places earlier this uh earlier this year. this year. this year. Thankfully, the uh and tell me if you've seen something I haven't. So, this has the same cause as what was going on in Minnesota, but the energy to me has felt very different.

And the reason is that the um the police, the law enforcement is not acting a [ __ ] fool. Yeah. And so because they're not like just like, "Oh, you're going to escalate. We're going to escalate." Um they've been able to create a situation where I mean they literally just rounded them up. They literally rounded them up if for people that haven't seen the footage. And um put these guys that refused to leave because they gave them all kinds of warnings. There were like tones playing on people's phones, curfews in place, you need to leave.

And some of them just refused to disband thinking they're not going to do anything. But they really did something. Brought in big vans, encircled them, arrested them, and took them out. As far as I know, there were no substantive injuries or anything like that. So, that to me is how you do it. You've got to enforce the law, but you've got to create a situation where it's not like a did the person do something wrong. It's like you can't be here. We have a curfew. You can protest during the day, but at 9:00 or 9:15 or whatever, you've got to disband.

And now, if you don't disband, you're breaking the law. You're knowingly breaking the law. And we don't have to be like, "Well, did that person push the ICE officer? Did the ICE officer push them for?" Right? It's just all super [ __ ] clear. You're not allowed to be here. We're arresting you for being here when you're not supposed to be here. Super smart, very easy. Seemed to diffuse a lot of the energy. So, from that perspective, I'm very excited to see law enforcement learn their lesson.

I don't know if that's an ICE uh figuring [ __ ] out, if that's the state police just being way [ __ ] better. New Jersey just get it. I don't know. But better everywhere. So, um it but this was well handled. So, preach on preach on preach on it. It's one of those things though where I understand the frustration. This is something that has been happening and I I think that I don't know if it's because Trump hasn't tweeted and hasn't then brought the subculture to then come and fight him about it and make it a bigger thing once he's seen what happened in Minnesota.

But it does just seem like a good oldfashioned protest. People are mad. Cops show up. They get rounded out. Everybody moves back. The people that leave leave. The four or five agitators get arrested, get thrown. So I'm weirdly okay with how things are turning out cuz nothing's getting burned down. There's no massive destruction. It's just agitation, frustration being like let out in protest. Very well said. Yeah. So, I'm kind of aligned with you on that one. Um on the flip side though, when you go to Paris and you see that it has been completely crazy.

completely crazy. completely crazy. This is wild. I'm a little bit upset. Um one, cuz Arsenal um wasn't able to get it done. My new My new My new Drew, imagine my shock and horror that my American co-host, as American as the day is long, falls in love with a Premier League team. the only Premier League team that is the absolute died in the wool rival to the team that I support. How? How, Drew? You would be with the men in them. So there she was there.

But no, um, people were But what what I hate about this is that when people have seen these, I have seen a lot of anti-immigrant. This is the war on demographics. This is what's going on. They need to deport these people. This is why. And I'm like, guys, this is this is pre this is football. This is this is what happens when a championship is won. I can pull up phrases from San Francisco. I can pull up videos from New York and all these other places that have gotten just as crazy.

So, while yes, burning in the street, I think Paris is going out. I don't want this to then become something that becomes politicized in another category that's separate than just people celebrating a little bit too excessively after a football game. football game. football game. I think you're you're pointing to something very important and I think making sure that people begin teasing these things apart is critical. But there was a a post about God, what country were they from? Somewhere in Eastern Europe. I don't remember the name of the country right now.

Like Slovakia or something. And um they had a huge rally for their national team or something. Anyway, something. Anyway, something. Anyway, oh it was Poland. I know what you're talking about. talking about. talking about. Gaggle of people and they were like nobody was violent and it was the crowd was musive. And so there really is something about France, man. France really likes to burn [ __ ] Like the number of riots that I've seen in France is crazy. And we're starting to see more and more of this in the US.

So I think for people to um rule out cultural influences would be a mistake. So one thing that's really fascinating, I'm reading this book about Japan that I or specifically about Tokyo that I did not expect to sort of stick in my mind as much as it is. And this guy was talking about how in the 60s because Japan gets bombed back into the stone ages um in the early 40s they also have to reconcile with oh [ __ ] we were the bad guys. And so like there's this whole weird thing that happens to their culture post World War II.

And so in the '60s, um, basically young people are just rioting everywhere and they are constantly having to be broken up with fire hoses and like really like a level of like our own civil rights movement where you're like, "Oo, this is kind of violent the way that these people are being broken up. It's pretty draconian. What the fuck?" And but nobody talks about it about what Japan ends up going through. But on the other side of basically breaking the will of the protesters and then showing them as you know I'm gonna say this was an economic problem and then they solve their economic woes because dude in the 50s um this guy is like it was prostitutes as far as the eye could see because they just so many men died and then the women had no way to take care of themselves and so it was just they sold their bodies and so I don't think we really ever think about we our generation my generation for sure and your guys' generation less so and he doesn't even know where Tokyo is except as it relates to anime in fairness because he's an anime head but um like that whole thing we thought of Japan as like the way that people think of China now so my generation was like as soon as um like the 80s hit it was like Japan's going to take over everything and that was the mentality go back and look at um Back to the Future 2 who's like the big boss the Japanese guys.

Uh, Die Hard, who's the big boss? Japanese people. So, it was like that was like the thing. Oh [ __ ] these guys are taking over. So, they break the back of the protesters and are like, "Stop [ __ ] being [ __ ] you guys." And the reason they did it for a reason. I had no [ __ ] idea about this. So, originally, um, they weren't worried about China. And then when the Korea war kicks off, they realize, oh [ __ ] like we need Japan to be a bull work against communism.

So, they went in and were like, "Fuck the unions. uh [ __ ] these student protesters. Like you guys need to get in [ __ ] line with the economy. And so they switch the mentality of their entire country over to like we're pro- capitalism. We're here to build something dope. And so I just first of all I couldn't believe they were able to actually do it to just switch the [ __ ] culture. So you would never see this [ __ ] in Japan. So, Japan has a like, hey, we're in this together vibe that is orchestrated, which I had no idea.

idea. idea. Uh, so this highly orchestrated, we're collective, but we're a capitalist nation. [ __ ] wild that it worked. And so when you go, oh, like, hold on, this isn't a cultural thing. This is just soccer. Well, first of all, you've got the culture of soccer, hooliganism, which was really started by the [ __ ] Brits. Nobody did it quite like the Brits. And then you do have to ask the question of what is going on in France that makes them so likely to light [ __ ] on fire.

What is going on in America that makes them so likely to light [ __ ] on fire? Is it the same thing? Which I actually don't think it is. Uh it's an echo of something. But so when you look at like, okay, what happens to the crime rates when you import people from certain countries, which for the love of [ __ ] Christ, will people map it to countries and not ethnicities? I get that there's going to be a lot of overlap. But when you look at the [ __ ] demographics in the US, does not matter what their skin color is, matters what [ __ ] culture they came from.

there you'll start to see, oh [ __ ] there are just some cultures that the things they celebrate are not high performant or that the things they celebrate are just rowdier, they burn more [ __ ] whatever. And so that understanding culture transmits values. If the Japanese taught themselves, oh, the culture that we're going to transmit is we clean the soccer stadium up afterwards, then they're not going to riot and burn things because that's not what's cool in their group. I've talked a lot about this in in my mindset phase.

Moms specifically would come to me and be like, "Yo, my son is derailing. What do I do?" And I'm like, "There there is a very simple answer. You've got to get as close to the following as humanly possible. Kidnap them, put them on a deserted island only surrounded by other men whose respect they want to earn. And then those men must act in a way that you want your child to act." That [ __ ] kid will get whipped into shape. And I mean literally like they will actually um like physically hurt him if they have to to get that kid to [ __ ] snap in line because that's what men do.

And uh that kid will [ __ ] get in shape. And as long as he's loved and celebrated when he gets in line, he'll [ __ ] get in line. But he has to want their respect. If he wants their respect because they do cool [ __ ] then like and but you can do this with gangbangers, drug dealers, whatever. Doesn't matter. That kid wants their respect. He gets jumped into the gang. he will act in crazy ass accordance with the things that they do. Same thing is true of honorable men.

And so you've got to model something and they've got to be in an arena where they can't go, "No, I don't want to work hard like that. I'd rather go earn the respect of these guys over here." It's got to be like they're they want their respect and they're trapped inside of it. That is culture. And so whatever the culture reinforces, then you're going to get that. And so if they're in like a a religious youth culture, then they're going to model that. if they're in a youth gang culture, they're going to model that.

So figure out what culture, like the actual values that are being passed down, and you will get your answer to what this is. And Drew, I want to bite through this [ __ ] microphone every time I bring this up. And people want it to be about race. It is not about race. It is about, for whatever [ __ ] reason, you're disseminating culture. It's those values and what that culture is. And because for so long we tended to look like the people that we grew up in that culture, people have made the mistake that they are one and the same.

the same. the same. They are often related, but not in a causal fashion. causal fashion. causal fashion. Yeah. You you said something earlier I want to double click on. You said that the France and the American thing, they're not the same thing, but they're echoes of each other. What's the thing that they echo? That we're becoming at the policy level of feminized nations. Now I think that so I believe before you jump in and you're saying that specifically we're talking about riots or we're going now broader rights.

rights. rights. No riots like riots. Yes. So a feminized culture allows this to happen. A feminized culture becomes so uh convinced of compassion that well the only reason that they're doing this is because they're impoverished. And um you know it's not affluent soccer fans that are doing this. This is a poverty problem. And so, sure, when you have somebody who's desperate in poverty and they finally get a glimpse of something joyful, uh they they don't know what to do. They [clears throat] they have been so neglected by society, abused by society even.

And so, what do you expect? Okay, that's [ __ ] nanny state [ __ ] So, when you allow that to become policy, instead of going, "Hey, I love it when a soccer fan celebrates. That's dope. Uh but by the way, if you [ __ ] burn that, you're going to jail." And so if you don't have that where you say, "Nope, hard pass. Don't care that you're team one. Don't care that you're poor. None of that [ __ ] matters to me. You just did a thing that we have a law against.

You're going to jail. And I'm going to get as close to um sentencing you in a totally blind way. I'm not like giving partial credit for this, that, or the other. Nope. This is just what we do." do." do." Um so, but we don't do that anymore. And in fact, it's so crazy, dude. I'm so milktoast back from back in the 80s, bro. Like now though, people are just like, "This guy is unhinched." That is so wild to me. So, um, that's what this is an echo of.

We have some people in the chat saying, you know, this is this is not about the culture race talk. It's about the rich elite talk, which honestly, I thought that's where you were going to go. I thought you were going to go straight to the economics of it all, but now it's always grounded in economics, meaning the values that are being So take um take um take um welfare states destroy families. They destroy families precisely because of the incentive structure that they create. create. create. So once you incentivize them through poverty essentially to split the family up, now you don't get a male and female dynamic.

You tend to get an only female dynamic. So that's where it's like this is an economic problem. Don't become a welfare state, which is an economic question. Keep families together. And when you do that, now you get a male female dynamic. The father is going to use discipline to keep the kids in line and hopefully mirror what masculinity looks like when it's channeled towards the right things, taking care of a family, etc. Um, now all of a sudden values are getting passed that you're like, but well, this is a value thing.

It's not really economic. It's like yes, but the underlying thing was that you had an economic structure that incentivized the disintegration of the family. Evolution is trying to tell you you need a male and a female. Like if we just had males, you deranged in a different way, but you just have females. And so you're deranging in that direction. And we we have just effeminized our culture to an insane degree. And remember, men can largely be clocked as they're trying to get laid. And so if the way to get laid is to act more affeminite, then they're going to act more effeminite, which is wild.

Uh and doesn't get you laid, PS. But they think it will. And so they run the it's literally known as the sneaky [ __ ] strategy. Uh okay. So there's that inside the the mouse traps in people's brain when you say feminization of culture that they think like Tom women aren't the problem. Enjoy that women are partly the problem. But is I think if I can like talk for you, there are certain characteristics that we attribute to feminisa feminization that you're leaning on. There's too much empathy.

There's too much. much. much. Yes. But let's let's not I'mma double down. There's like trying to save you. Godamn it. I'm looking at the chat, bro. Take the [ __ ] queue. Uh so here, but here's the reality. Yeah. that um women are incredibly necessary and needed. Evolution has shaped them to be half of the whole that makes society run. Men are incredibly important and needed. Evolution has shaped them to be half of the whole that makes society run when either of them derange. So masculinity deranged in Nazi Germany.

There was just no compassion. You you can't have compassion and shove people in an oven. That's wild. Yeah. So we we know what that looks like. And then femininity is running ri uh wild right now. And so it just so happens at this moment brought to you by weak men and um systems that have become overly feminized. Now it is a double whammy of it just has way more women in it and that we have taught men to emasculate themselves for whatever 30 years. So you put the two together like this isn't a it's not like women are to blame.

This is a men and women are out of balance right now. It just so happens that in creating the out of balance they're spilling over here. Now the I'm actually more nervous to say the following because I I think this is way more likely for people to run with and become problematic. problematic. problematic. But I do think ultimately that when men are weak, then it creates the space for women to become out of balance. So it's like in my marriage, Lisa and I hold each other in dynamic tension.

And if I didn't hold her in dynamic tension, she would man and I would really like to say these things in front of her. I am not bashful about this, nor do I expect her to. She might ask clarifying questions or whatever, but um I don't expect her to disagree with this that if left to her own devices, she would run the company very emotionally and that would be to the detriment of the company and the company is far less likely to survive her absence than it would be to survive my absence.

So without me, the company's far more, if I said that backwards, the company's far more likely to collapse if she's running it than it is if I'm running it. Now, she is very, very useful in keeping my lesser impulses in check. Um, but when you mistake emotion for a guiding light to logical outcomes, you run into trouble. She does it all the time. She knows she does it. And so, she'll turn to me and be like, "Look, I feel this way, but I get it's a feeling.

And so, make sure that you take us where we need to go." So um that part of the dynamic tension because my wife contributes as an equal peer to me just in different ways. But that part of the dynamic tension requires me to be strong and not to buckle when I feel like maybe I'm being mean or whatever. It's like no, we can't do that. It's got to be done as a policy. It's got to look like this. Otherwise, we're going to spin off into this thing.

And I get that that's upsetting to you. And there have been many times where my business partner and I have had to have a conversation away from the team so that I could say you're having this the way that you're processing this is emotional. You cannot bring this in front of the team. You cannot do that. And so I know that people hearing me say those words are like [ __ ] that's grotesque. How can this guy say things like that? It's like [ __ ] how are you not saying things like that?

That is your [ __ ] job. And if my wife ever sees me being a robot she's going to say stop being a [ __ ] robot. This company is staffed with humans and they have loves and passions and if you don't integrate that this company will also die a different death but it will die a death and it's true and so I need and want her to say those things and she needs and wants me to say the things that I am saying. So, it's like we've somehow become deranged as a culture and we don't think men need to say in a very humane, loving way that recognizes women as their [ __ ] peers.

I don't know how many times I have to say that, but like where you go, hey, my job is to make sure that we don't let this become an emotional rationalization. That's precisely what you're doing right now. I understand that me saying that's going to make you mad and I don't care. Not that I don't care, but like we're going to have to set that aside. We can deal with that. whatever that's doing to our relationship later in a side conversation, but right now that no, we're not going to do that that way.

And I think that we have trained men to fear their um aggression, and I don't mean with women. I mean to feel like, yeah, I know what's right in this moment, and I'm going to be um a warrior for it. I'm going to say, no, like that's we're trying to get here, and the way that I'm saying that we're going to get there is the way that's going to lead us there. and I will always listen if you have a better idea of course but it's got to be an idea based in logic not based in emotion.

So I mean you've given me every opportunity to eject out and I understand that I haven't taken it but it's like if I'm actually going to be useful to people I've got to say the real thing real thing real thing and I'm glad you brought that around cuz literally I was dealing with my first this is my first teenage crash out with Lynn and I didn't know how to handle it. I had to call my sister to talk me off a ledge because I'm like, "Wait, am like am I tripping?" Because there's a lot of emotion coming here and like did did I I feel like I'm doing the right thing here.

Like and I had to just look around to just have somebody else. And she was like, "No, you have to remember like she's a young teenage girl. She's going through a wave of emotions like it's not the end of the world. It's okay. I know that she might have said things that was hard to hear and there might be some truth in it. You have to talk to through her too, but that doesn't mean fold immediately under that pressure and then acquies to that." So there is something I am now your sister super fan.

No, but that there is something to that like yes as men in society we do have to draw that line. Uh and then even on the on the flip side of that there are times with women when you are right to a queue or you are right in this one aspect of the area but you're not looking at the totality of the picture and things like that. that. that. So I completely understand how that works on an individual dynamic. I understand how that can bleed into the family dynamic.

We have specific examples, but from a society level, I think is a part that I'm a bit more confused. Like, how do I we can't say every man needs to say no to a woman today. Like, how do we Yeah, that would be asine. That's why I'm saying the reason I don't even like talking about that side is it will be read like that. And people will think this [ __ ] like I don't even need to listen to her. It's like, yeah, that's the dumbest [ __ ] thing I've ever heard in my life.

When my wife speaks up, I'm like, hold on, I want to hear that. Tell me what you think I'm missing. My wife is extremely insightful. She understands me very well and will often see things that I miss. I so I'm so skeptical of my ability to be right all the time that like I just want to I want her to debate me. I want her to push back. I do not want her to fold. And so all of that and by the way, she's had to say like, "Listen, sometimes you're too hard.

You're too tenacious. You're too aggressive." And so it's like fair and I appreciate that and thank you. Um, and so, and one of the biggest arguments we've ever had where she was properly upset was me becoming a robot. And she's like, "You become so divorced from your emotions." Unfortunately, she the only words she could say were, "I want my husband back." And I just was like, "I do not know what that [ __ ] means." And so, it took us a very long time for me to realize, "Okay, what you're saying is you need me to broadcast and receive love." Yes.

Cool. Got it. Now, that was on the back of some yelling and screaming where it was like, I don't understand what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, you get there in the end. So, yes, I don't want men to just go, I'm just gonna say no and whatever I think is right. I'm here to put boundaries. It's like in a high functioning diad. functioning diad. functioning diad. You're here to figure out what the right path is forward. When the reasoning being done is emotional, then it's to go, okay, those are feelings.

Got it. But feelings do not necessarily help us get to our goal. Cause and effect helps us get to our goal. And so my job is to go, I need to integrate those feelings into the experience because my job isn't to create a life that you hate. My job is to create a life that you are in love with. But we have to be able to state our goals and then use cause and effect to get there. And so that's where I want to see men get to is to have a spine.

Um, by the way, if you want to get laid, always be willing to walk away. Um, that's the only way. And so once you your strategy for impressing women is to go become extraordinary at something to want to partner with them to listen to them to hear them to understand them uh to be emotionally available to them but at the same time have an agenda and say we both agree this is what we're trying to do and it's my job to really map out the cause and effect of how we're going to get there.

Anytime you see something I don't to integrate that. Um, and it's your job to make sure that I don't become a motionless automata who lives only to serve a goal. And it's like that dynamic for dynamic for dynamic for hundreds of thousands, millions of years has just been evolution trying to make sure that we keep our kids alive long enough to have kids. And at some point, we got so good at both being able to have sex without having kids. Uh, prosperity has been so longived that we haven't had to remember, oh, we need dynamic tension between the two groups.

and more economic forces have deranged it by forcing women into the workforce, yada yada, which I'm happy to talk about at any time. I love that women are in the workforce. Impact Theory has its incredible fair share of extraordinary women. Um, but I would tell all of them they need to run an audit on what their life is going to feel like in their 50s and 60s if they don't have kids and if they prioritize their career, as my wife has done, by the way, for anybody confused.

Uh, but we had those conversations. What do your 50s and 60s look like? How do you account for? You will have a strong desire to nurture. You will have a strong desire to play the um grandma role of being able to pass on your wisdom. How are you going to fulfill that? Because otherwise you will feel a drift. There will be nothing that gives your life meaning and purpose. I'm going to stop otherwise I'll fractal. I'll fractal. I'll fractal. No, no, that that was good. You nailed it.

Uh and the last thing, there's a lot of things happening in Brooklyn. To me, this was like conspiracy theory, like conspiracy corner. I was like, "Oh, it's just a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That's what's happening." Like, they're coming out. But apparently, there's been a couple Yeah, there's been a couple individuals coming out walking around. So, I don't know if this is the beginning of an Oceans 11 reboot or if there's just gas prices too high and we're taking underground sewers or anything like that, but what do you think is is a drift happening in New York right now?

I don't [clears throat] know. So, I have no idea what to make of this other than this needs to be investigated. they need to look at this immediately uh and figure out what's going on. So my brain immediately jumps to the fact that um they found that device uh in the um reservoir the bomb. So there was a bomb planted in a reservoir that they found randomly as they were like running maintenance on it. And so when I start seeing infrastructure, people being there, bombs being planted in infrastructure, now I'm like, hold on.

Like, you've got to figure out what's going on. Because this is the kind of thing that it's like, oh, they've been down there um either building tunnels where they can put weapons or whatever for, you know, quick maneuvering through the city to get access to the weapons. They are um planting bombs on infrastructure, whatever. You can't not look into this. But there's nothing right now other than, oh, super weird. People with tools were underground for 3 hours. That's very weird. Uh, it does not immediately mean that there's some giant conspiracy going on, but you can't not look at it.

Ninja Turtles, man. I'm telling you, it's it's definitely the Ninja Turtles. Wouldn't that be dope, dude? Oh, man. That's what the world needs right now. We need Ninja Turtles. No. Do you do you really want to know what we need? God, how do you do this? Um the there was so the reason that cartoons popped off so hard in the 80s was because you could run commercials on normal TV for children's entertainment which meant all you had to do was make a cartoon to go along with a toy and now you could print money handover fist because the cartoon itself you couldn't make enough money.

This is the crisis in the Japanese anime industry that would be saved by AI by the way but they're of course resisting it for now. Um, so that whole thing was just it created some of the greatest IP on planet Earth and then they reeregulated it. So it's like but they're not making IP to beat it. I think I already brought up that I can't remember if I said it on camera, but there was a um uh I think it was an athlete who was I think he's famous interviewing this young kid and kid's like eight and he's like, "Oh, so what cartoons are you into?" Kids like, "What do you mean?" And he was like, "What cartoons do you watch?" "I watch YouTube." "Yeah, yeah, but what cartoons?

What are you talking about?" And he's like, "Seen Spongebob Squarepants. Uh uh Tom and Jerry." And the kid's like, "What?" He he didn't even have a concept of cartoon. Now, of course, he's watching cartoons, but he doesn't know they're called cartoons. To him, it's just YouTube. And YouTube has become this amorphous hyper segmented hyper segmented hyper segmented like very weird digital circus thing that I don't think sticks to your ribs. I need to go see Obsession because Obsession at least speaks to what does Gen Z want in films and it from what I've seen it has a more almost Blair Witch modernized obviously but a more modernized Blair Witch YouTube vibe and that shows me that their entire visual language is different than somebody of my age.

And I don't think it's going to stick as profoundly to their ribs, especially not Gen Alpha who's now just coming up on never- ending AI slap, etc. So, it'll be interesting to see what happens, but I think you have to force a longer form narrative engagement as parents or your kids are going to suffer for it. So, like we used to force kids to learn piano or trombone in my case, we got to like do things with kids to get them to intake story in long form or it's really going to be a problem.

Oh, that's a good point. Um, I do it like subconsciously like I would force Lynn to watch the cartoons I used to watch. Me and her bonded over the Powerpuff Girls. Um, Craig McCracken killed that like cartoon. Um, there are some some that didn't stick, you know, some old shows that she's like, "This is dumb. I don't want to watch it." But her like liking that show that I liked when I was her age, that was kind of cool. So there are certain overlaps and I do think that as much as humans evolve and things get bigger and technology and stuff, I think there are still those basic mechanisms inside kids brains that the Saturday morning cartoon worked for a reason.

And I still think if we put them in there and the kids did the same thing, it would have the same effect on them. They'll still bond with it in the same way. But also their morality plays. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one thing like you lose sight of that at your own peril. Like part of the way that you indoctrinate kids is through entertainment. So yes, be very careful what you let them watch, but you are shaping their value system by the cartoons that they watch.

Like G.I. Joe literally taught me over and over and over about being a hero and about not leaving somebody behind and and then they would literally do PSAs in the middle of the cartoon. Like to this day, if it's Thunder and Lightning, I know not to go in the water because of G.I. Joe. Like they did this whole thing about how it hits the water and it can electrocute you and I was like, "Oh, damn." Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. the battle.

the battle. There it is. Cool. You said knowing is half the battle, right? As someone typed that in chat. I thought that was like the most GI Joe thing ever. That was their whole stick. stick. stick. Okay. Super chats. Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh Ganjadon says, "I feel like you're getting to feel like what you're getting to is an Alvin Tooffler quote from his book Future Shock. The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Damn, that's a really banger quote. I've not heard that before. I like that a lot. That is certainly true. Fors. Although, if you guys have seen some of the stats on the colleges now are screaming to have a return of the SATs because people are making it to like advanced mathematics classes with like middle school math skills. That's wild. Grade inflation is real. Dan Clark, Controller Wipes, says, "Could this be us switching from a farmer society to a hunter society? There's a theory that most ADHD, etc.

are descendants from hunters where most of our institutions were modeled after farmers where flexibility didn't matter. That's interesting. I don't know. That is very fascinating. us as a hund I don't think it would be us moving into that but I think it would be us having removed ourselves so far from something that we have an instinct for that it's creating a problem. So there's fascinating data about the negative impacts of um agriculture and I think there's also fascinating stats coming out about what happens when you let kids raise on screens.

Like there's some very terrifying data about that. So be careful parents. Luke Adam Miller says, "Tom, please have Helen Andrews on to discuss feminization of institutions." of institutions." of institutions." Did we reach out to her? We did. We did. This was Yeah, this was pre-trip stuff though, so I I got 150 emails to climb through. though. Yeah. No, I'd love to have her on. She's very interesting. Very interesting. Also an economist to discuss uses and benefits of prediction markets beyond recreational gambling. Barard economist uh Rajiv Sethi is one option.

Cheers. Interesting. All right. I'm always down for guest recommendations. So, thank you guys. Yeah, you guys knocked it out the park with Simon Dixon. That was a audience recommendation. So, thank you guys for that. that. that. Have you checked on the episode lately? How's it doing? Yes, we're at doing really well. 350. Let's go. Oh snap. Do I hear 450? That's amazing. Thank you guys. I'm glad that you're responding to it and thank you for the recommendation cuz yeah, it was awesome. Really enjoyed my time with them both at dinner and uh in the interview.

It was great. Executive 1 AJ says, "Why did you choose not to have kids? Adoption. Individuals such as yourself would raise future leaders. Like Tupac stated, I'm not saying I'm going to change the world, but I guarantee you that I will spark the brain that will." It's interesting. Uh okay. So, the right way to say uh to explain my thoughts on kids are that I really want kids. Like, I really want kids. The only thing I want more than to have kids is to not have kids.

And I think people think I'm being cheeky when I say that. And so, they forget the part where I'm saying I really want kids. Like, that's a real thing for me. And I wish that I could both have kids and not have kids. Now obviously I heir on the side of not having kids slightly more partly because um in my 20s I interacted with kids a lot. I used to teach music to kids. Uh I ran a playground for a while back home. It's like kids that didn't have anywhere to go during the summer.

They would send them to the playground. So I would go there was like a government program. You'd get them food and you'd bring them lunches and stuff anyway. It was a whole thing. And so I spent a lot of time with kids. Um, and then I formally big brother for it wasn't through the big brother organization. It was through something called Troy Camp, but um, I ended up big brothering for this kid for ages. Ended up being eight and a half years and was extraordinarily close with him.

He did not have a father. So I was very, very involved in his life for a very long time. The ups and the downs and watching him get older and children's entertainment, which ironically back then made me want to bash my head through a wall. But um so I was very very very close was very very very close to the problem and realized that ooh there are other things that I want to do with my life because being a parent is this is why I thank parents for their service.

You're effectively giving your life force to somebody else. It what a gift. What a gift. Um and part of my what scared me is one I wasn't convinced I'd be able to do it well because um I really have a hard time watching people I love suffer. And so I was worried that I would give my kids everything um and that they would grow up to be [ __ ] And then um also I think that a lot of it is just what the personality is of the kid.

Uh and that doing parenting right is basically just not breaking them. And so yeah, there you put it all together. And um I just I also the other part of this my relationship with Lisa is so enjoyable that some part of me didn't want anything to come in between that because I know especially women change dramatically when they have kids in terms of their focus. Um and then I love my life and so put it all together and I decided not to have kids. So there you have it.

have it. have it. That's it for the super chats. Cool. Um, big shout out again to Ky. Appreciate the uh sponsorship. So guys, again, use code impact to get you $10 off your first trade. And we got a master class coming up. Yeah, we do. So, as you guys will know, we're talking about this at the top of the hour. AI is changing the landscape dramatically. I think the world is going to force all of us to constantly, not constantly, but you're not going to be able to sit in the pocket for 20, 30 years.

You're probably going to be in four to sevenyear epics where you do one thing and then technology changes so much that the world changes so much that you're going to be doing something else. And so I do offer a free master class on how to start your own company using AI. And so I'm going to be doing the next one June 11th at 1 p.m. Pacific time. So whether you want to learn how to deploy AI inside of a company or you want to start a company using AI, make sure that you join me.

It's totally free. June 11th at 1 p.m. Pacific time. The info is in the description. So, make sure you check that out. Sign up immediately. All right. Love you guys bunches and we will see you on Wednesday. Take care. Peace.