Jacqueline Novogratz (founder and CEO of Acumen)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome, Dawn to his expert.

[1] Experts on Expert.

[2] Today, we are joined by D. Money and Monty Patty and Dan Shepard.

[3] We have a very interesting guest, Jacqueline Novigratz.

[4] She is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a nonprofit impact investment fund, and a New York Times bestselling author.

[5] She's written a few books, The Blue Sweater, Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, Practices, to build a better world.

[6] Have you read this book, Delta?

[7] No. Delta, how do you feel about investing in companies that help poor people?

[8] What do you mean?

[9] Like, if there was a company that was going to help poor people, do you think that would be a good one to give money to?

[10] Yeah, I'll be really happy.

[11] I'll give money down.

[12] How much money do you have?

[13] When you came in, you were talking something about $17.

[14] Yeah, my mom always made $17, but I already have, like, a little bit more than $100 in my car.

[15] In your savings?

[16] Yeah.

[17] And where do you think you're going to spend all that money?

[18] I don't know it's up to me and my friend because we mixed our money and now it's a bigger amount.

[19] Can I offer you an idea?

[20] There's a sweater I want.

[21] It's $2 ,000.

[22] Just, you know, for Christmas.

[23] Do you think it's reasonable for someone to have a $2 ,000 sweater, Delta?

[24] Yeah, that's right.

[25] It's pretty crazy.

[26] It will have to be, like, really perfect.

[27] And, like, it probably can't happen, but the only thing I would think was if it could change into different sweatshirts, it could be $200 ,000.

[28] That's a good thought.

[29] Innovative.

[30] That is probably the only way one would be worth $2 ,000 is if it actually was like seven or eight sweaters and won.

[31] This isn't that.

[32] Okay, well, we do have an incredibly interesting and very, very intelligent guess.

[33] Jacqueline Novigratz.

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[37] Where are you coming from today?

[38] Well, I spent the night in L .A., but I come from New York City.

[39] You're from Virginia originally?

[40] From all over the place.

[41] I was technically born in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

[42] My dad was an Army Ranger and then moved.

[43] probably 17 times until I was 10.

[44] Oh.

[45] We've had an inordinate amount of people that had that childhood.

[46] And I think it's one of these things, not unlike dyslexia, which is like, it either breaks you or it really makes you.

[47] It becomes an asset.

[48] Would you say clearly this has fallen into the ladder?

[49] Probably like everything, there's the two sides, but probably the latter.

[50] We had this big family and we moved around.

[51] It probably reinforced being a tribe.

[52] I think you have to learn how to make friends really fast.

[53] Yeah.

[54] And yet I still have a horrendous time saying goodbye to people.

[55] Ah, that's what stuck with you.

[56] Yeah, but being the new kid every year and a half or whatever that would have worked out to, 17 times and 18 years, we're looking at 12 .6 months.

[57] By the time she was 10.

[58] By the time it was 10.

[59] Oh, 10.

[60] Well, sometimes we moved around in the same place, but I was in preschool in, I think, West Virginia, and kindergarten in Mount Clemens Mishikin.

[61] Ding, ding, that's where I'm from.

[62] I know.

[63] Okay.

[64] First grade in Sacred Heart School near West Point, second and third in California, and so it went.

[65] Oh, my.

[66] my goodness.

[67] Well, it's interesting that you found yourself in the line of work that you're in because you travel a ton for your work.

[68] All the time.

[69] I would predict you'd be allergic to moving around.

[70] I would imagine you desire roots in a crazy way.

[71] Well, again, I have roots and rooted nests in this family.

[72] I mean, there are seven of us and we're a tribe on every level.

[73] And so no matter where I go, home is there.

[74] But how about making new friends?

[75] Do you have enough siblings surrounding you in school that you at least had someone you'd see in the hallway?

[76] Well, yeah.

[77] I mean, I walked down New York streets and I always bump into a sibling.

[78] Oh, you do.

[79] So you always had friends, and then there was always room in our table for more people.

[80] And that was just sort of the ethos of family.

[81] And probably that combination has really helped me. In cultures like East and West Africa, South Asia, where family showing up duty, no physical space between bodies.

[82] Right, right, right.

[83] Right.

[84] It's all kind of part of the deal.

[85] Yeah.

[86] So I think it actually really helped me in my line of work.

[87] And then high degree of flexibility required of you.

[88] Super degree of flexibility.

[89] Which is a hard skill to pick up.

[90] I moved a ton as well, lots of different stepdads.

[91] The family change all the time.

[92] And I have only lived in two different places in L .A. in 26 years.

[93] But there was a magic word that you said there, which was step dads, a lot of stepdad.

[94] Yeah, yeah.

[95] You didn't have stepdads.

[96] No, I had a lot of stability.

[97] Right, right, right.

[98] I had this kind of big family, immigrant roots, Catholic, rituals and traditions.

[99] There was a lot of stability within the chaos.

[100] What I want to talk about is your broader question of what do we define as success?

[101] Like this is a fundamental tenant to maybe all of these issues we wrestle with.

[102] It's like if the foundation of success and the thing worth pursuing is, as you label it, money, power, and fame.

[103] Oh, I forgot.

[104] We are in.

[105] Money, power, fame.

[106] When I think about tackling this, I'm in lockstep with you.

[107] As someone who's gotten unfair shares of success, money, and fame, and to realize those didn't really solve any of my existential crises.

[108] But it's a lot to ask somebody to trust me and to say, don't go pursue it, that there's actually esteem and actually loving oneself on the side of service, ironically.

[109] Unfortunately, I think we in Hollywood have a big role in it.

[110] How are these measures of success problematic for us?

[111] Well, in some ways you said it, it's problematic for us as individuals in that it doesn't lead to that sense of meaning of real purpose.

[112] I'm not even going to go to the happiness word.

[113] But for society, what it's enabled us to do is build a whole economic, social, and frankly political framework that puts profit in the individual at the center of everything.

[114] And as a result, we're more divided, we're more disconnected, we're more unequal, and we're looking at catastrophic climate crisis that will impact all of us.

[115] When we were in a world of greater separation and you were in these small communities and just were with people like you, it wasn't as critical for the whole world.

[116] Climate crisis wasn't there because we didn't have capitalism gone mad.

[117] Today it is.

[118] Today what happens anywhere in the world has impact on the rest of us, climate crisis being one major example, the pandemic being another major example, terrorism.

[119] And so we really don't have a choice but to change our systems.

[120] And I think it fundamentally starts with changing our definition of success.

[121] Yeah, the nationalist isolation fantasy, albeit attractive in some ways, for sure, it just ignores reality.

[122] As you say, like, they get sick in Wuhan, five seconds later, we're sick here.

[123] You can't really be isolated.

[124] I know you've spoken to John Haidt, who it's so amazing, as you know.

[125] And he has a lot of great examples of where nationalism is, as healthy as good, in terms of a sense of solidarity, a sense of taking care of, but it has to be within the context of globalism.

[126] I don't know if you saw at COP, there was a 15 -year -old girl from India, and she gave the best speech of the whole thing.

[127] And she said, I'm a girl from India.

[128] I'm a girl from Earth.

[129] If only, this is how we raised every child.

[130] Yeah.

[131] Okay.

[132] I've acknowledged myself as a cynic, as a pessimist.

[133] So when I see your life story and I see you go to Stanford, yeah, for MBA.

[134] and then work at Chase for a few years, and then go, no, this isn't the path.

[135] I already can't understand you?

[136] Really?

[137] Well, first, can I challenge you?

[138] Yes, yes, yes.

[139] First, I don't see cynic in you.

[140] I see skeptic, which is a big difference.

[141] Second, even as you describe yourself, it's extraordinary.

[142] The words that you choose, because you're leaving out so many of the choices that you have made in your life, like being a vegetarian, caring for...

[143] Oh, I thought you were vegetarian.

[144] I was vegan for a year.

[145] Well, that was a good try.

[146] Good try.

[147] That stuck with me now for my life.

[148] And I always feel really guilty.

[149] They even tried to make us like vegetarians of the year.

[150] I'm like, I can't accept this award.

[151] Oh, see, even there, you didn't accept the award as good at least.

[152] Okay, well, scratch that one.

[153] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[154] We have to take that off the good list.

[155] No, but I've listened to a lot of your talks and your conversations and they're driven by curiosity.

[156] And I don't think you can be a cynic and be truly curious, particularly about people who are different from you.

[157] So what is the defining delineation between cynic and skeptics?

[158] So I do like skeptic.

[159] I think that is maybe more what I am.

[160] I think a skeptic is always questioning.

[161] But the skeptic doesn't start from a place of certainty and surety.

[162] The cynic does.

[163] I think that cynics are fueled by fear and therefore ultimately are the best friends of the status quo.

[164] Right.

[165] I don't want anything to change.

[166] So my stances, it never will.

[167] There's no curiosity in that.

[168] And that's not what I'd experience in you.

[169] If I could build a more sympathetic defense of their position, maybe it's, I've seen change and it didn't help me or anyone I love.

[170] Some people have been burned by change.

[171] I haven't.

[172] I have happened to benefit generally from change.

[173] That's a fair point.

[174] Well, it's extraordinary in the communities that I work with in Acumen is people have been burned for many, many generations.

[175] They've seen people come and go with promises that they are going to fix their problems, whether you're looking at Rwanda or.

[176] many of the nations in which Acumen works.

[177] We built companies in housing in Pakistan.

[178] And I remember when our first entrepreneur built the first house.

[179] And I was so excited and I went to go see it, but nobody would sign up to buy a house, even though they would pay the same for these houses as they were paying the slumlords to rent in the slums of Lahore.

[180] And then we got caught in this crazy crossfire of about 50 kids with guns, definition of a bad day.

[181] And the next day, Javar, God came back in the community and people started buying houses.

[182] And now it's the most effective, low -income, affordable housing program in the nation.

[183] It's a real model for the world.

[184] So my work is working with people for whom trust is a rare commodity and it's really hard to earn.

[185] Yeah.

[186] Are they cynical?

[187] I don't know if I would use that word, but I would definitely say they do not trust and they often don't believe.

[188] And they have so much at stake because they have no income that to try to get people to, to pay for something they don't know what work, which is so much of the work I do, is a really big first step.

[189] Now we have 400 million people who've been touched or our customers of the companies that Acumen has built.

[190] That's a big number.

[191] Yeah.

[192] So Acumen, as I understand it, which you started, you take philanthropic money and then you convert that into funding entrepreneurs on the ground in these areas.

[193] Amazing.

[194] Yes.

[195] So when you leave Chase, does this, idea come to you right away, or is it a path to that realization?

[196] It's a path.

[197] I leave Chase.

[198] I had seen that the poor were excluded and exploited by capitalism that's just focused on shareholders.

[199] I want to find a way to lend to low -income people because I see the vitality and the vibrance of those communities.

[200] And I read about Dr. Muhammad Eunice, who started the Grammy Bank in Bangladesh.

[201] This is way back in 1986.

[202] that sends me on a journey.

[203] So Acumen raises philanthropy to invest in a company like Ethiopian in Ethiopia.

[204] Two guys from Chicago see the opportunity to create a chicken industry because there is no chicken industry and high levels of malnutrition.

[205] But they've got to find a way to build an industry with customers who make a dollar a day, who have no trust of them.

[206] There's no financing.

[207] There's no infrastructure.

[208] There's corruption.

[209] So you would help finance the chicken company.

[210] So we would meet in this case, Dave Ellis and his partner, Joe Shields, and they would come to our East Africa office with this great idea that they're going to build a chicken country.

[211] And we'd be like, how do you go and just try it a little bit first?

[212] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[213] So they get $100 ,000 from the Ethiopian government from this who's trying to privatize some of these defunct chicken places.

[214] And they make every mistake in the book, but they keep coming back.

[215] They don't get cynical.

[216] And then they actually have a business model that really intrigues us, where they've learned by then why.

[217] the current business model is fully broken and they understand that too many do -goaters or just foreign capitalists think that you could sell a one -day -old chicken to a farmer and the farmer will take it and run.

[218] Well, it's really hard to raise a chicken from day one to day 45 when the chicken starts laying eggs.

[219] And so they realize they've got to incubate all of the eggs to the point that they get to have a one -day chicken.

[220] Then they'll sell a thousand chicks to an agent.

[221] So they've got to get these agents' loans so that they can protect the chickens, feed the chickens.

[222] They'll help them, but that then becomes the beginning of the model.

[223] Then those agents sell three to four chickens, whatever a small holder can afford, because once you've got a chicken at that 45 to 60 days old, you will have a source of eggs to feed your children.

[224] It wasn't that then they stopped making mistakes.

[225] They continued to make some mistakes, but our capitalist patient will invest for 10 years or more.

[226] I don't want to make it sound too easy because it was hard.

[227] Yeah.

[228] But they were with about 20 million smallholder farmers as of today, and the government has credited them with reducing childhood malnutrition by 11 % in one of the largest provinces in the country.

[229] So I have to imagine part of your success is that while you are definitely mission -driven and philanthropic at heart, you're also, must be a pragmatist in what the reality of a market is and how it must work in order to be self -sufficient.

[230] Like, did you bring a kind of bold reality to this space that maybe hadn't existed?

[231] Thank you for asking that.

[232] When we were first naming Acumen, that was really important to me, that philanthropy is so often seen as soft, easy, generous for good people.

[233] It's to give them a fish versus teach them the fish paradigm.

[234] And by the time I started Acumen, I didn't just want to give them a fish or teach them to fish.

[235] I wanted to build the damn market because I'd never been on a coastal community where people didn't know how to fish.

[236] Right, right.

[237] But they didn't have markets.

[238] And the people that did buy from them would rip them off, left, right and center.

[239] So early on, I still had no idea when we started 20 years ago that I would be working and we would be working at some of the most corrupt, tough markets on the planet.

[240] And I'm not talking geography.

[241] I'm talking all the public markets.

[242] And it was the same in the United States, right?

[243] Our trash.

[244] It was so corrupt in the United States.

[245] Sanitation, corrupt.

[246] Housing, corrupt.

[247] Water, corrupt.

[248] Health care, corrupt.

[249] And so, yes, I brought in the pragmatist perspective.

[250] I'd seen that generosity by itself was too easy and that this was about justice, which is where the work starts.

[251] And that the only way to make it work was to match that generosity with deep, insistent accountability for everyone.

[252] So that the poor weren't seen as starving, needy, but they were seen as whole moral human beings capable of solving their problems.

[253] There's a very fine line between compassion and pity.

[254] and you must always find yourself on the side of compassion and not pity.

[255] Yeah, I hate pity.

[256] I even think that empathy can go too far.

[257] Oh, we're Paul Bloom devotees, so...

[258] I loved your talk with Paul Bloom.

[259] He's awesome.

[260] Yeah, he's incredible.

[261] And I'll say this to the young people all the time.

[262] You know, empathy without action is another way of reinforcing the status quo.

[263] So, like, I don't want to hear about how badly you feel.

[264] Help me what you're doing.

[265] I come from an anthropology background.

[266] So I've seen just nothing but the terrible outcomes of many, many well -intentioned programs throughout Africa, throughout South America, people suffer from something we call naive realism.

[267] So it's like, I want a microwave.

[268] I have to assume the Messiah want a microwave.

[269] Like, I can't comprehend someone doesn't want the same thing I want, right?

[270] And now I've got this whole program to bring microwaves to people who don't want them.

[271] You're killing me. I mean, this is why I started accurate.

[272] What I'd like about your approach is it seems like the goal is just to break the inertia.

[273] So it's like, let me get this ball rolling so that it can then become its own force.

[274] Yeah, well, it's funny.

[275] I mean, because life is also a relationship.

[276] and kind of the Sufi way of get that ball rolling, but what you find is that if you have the courage to get that ball rolling, often that ball starts to show you where you need to go next.

[277] And before you know it, you got a lot of balls moving and you make the real change.

[278] So I'm a skeptic too.

[279] Okay, great.

[280] Trust me. Okay.

[281] We could have some fun dinners together.

[282] I think we could have fun dinners.

[283] But I also believe that we can change the world because I've seen it.

[284] Yeah.

[285] And now at age 60, I've seen it so many times that I more of a believer now than I was at age 28 or 29.

[286] So you have to have what I would call the moral imagination.

[287] You've got to see the world that you want to build.

[288] And that does take idealism.

[289] And I don't think naivete, but true sense of the possible.

[290] But if you don't have the humility and the grittiness to be willing to go into the ugly and miserable state of what is, you're not going to succeed.

[291] And that, I think, is our starting point.

[292] When we see an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter how big their dream is, can they hold that dream while also operationalizing at the ground level?

[293] Now probably the sector that has most changed me as a person because of all the great work everybody else has done and that I've gotten to kind of ride shock on to has been in electricity off grid.

[294] You, 300 million people have gotten electricity from your programs?

[295] 160.

[296] I'm sorry, there's 300 million people without electricity.

[297] There's still 800 million.

[298] Oh, geez, Louise.

[299] I was way off that.

[300] No, you weren't, because most people would assume that 145 years after Edison invented the light bulb, everybody would have electricity.

[301] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[302] And when you think about people who don't have electricity, you think, oh, that's really bad.

[303] They're in a village in the dark.

[304] Go live there.

[305] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[306] It is so irrational, unproductive, immoral, and unsafe.

[307] Well, I came to find out this through a bizarre route, which is these LBJ books, the Carol books are 65 of them.

[308] Yeah.

[309] But there is a goddamn master class.

[310] electrification of the South and how de -incentivized the capitalists were to do that.

[311] But then they just make you live in the life of someone without electricity back then, which is like washing your clothes is 20 hours of your week.

[312] You have a completely different life with or without it.

[313] The book The Rational Optimist has a great chapter on electricity as well.

[314] And it's exactly to what you're talking about.

[315] The correlation between electricity and labor is off the charts.

[316] And it's not just labor.

[317] What I experience, it is staying up later, the dignity of being able.

[318] able to read, whether they want to read the Bible or Quran or comics, whatever.

[319] Yeah.

[320] It's important to people.

[321] Cedaris, hopefully, is what they're reading down there.

[322] Maybe they could read some good Cedaris, too.

[323] But the security, so many women live by themselves.

[324] Their husbands are off in the mines or working in cities.

[325] And so when we first started selling electricity, what shocked me is that women would put the first light.

[326] You'd only get three, but one light would go outside the front door.

[327] So you'd have a security light.

[328] Yeah.

[329] So the idea of human dignity, like, I get to make a choice.

[330] I get to have some agency over my life is so connected to electricity.

[331] Yeah.

[332] We then became the largest off -grid energy investor in the world.

[333] We have 38 companies now.

[334] That is how we've gotten to the even bigger numbers.

[335] Now we have a sight line to what it would actually take to solve the problem.

[336] My favorite part of this whole story is you going to Afghanistan and you're handing out these lights and this is spectacular.

[337] It's 120 degrees.

[338] And a woman's like, we don't want these lights.

[339] In Pakistan.

[340] Well, it's Pakistan.

[341] We want a fan.

[342] And you're like, yeah, but these lights are fantastic.

[343] And she just shut you down.

[344] She's like, I don't want a light.

[345] I want a fan.

[346] It's too fucking hot.

[347] She didn't say fucking I did.

[348] And you had to pivot.

[349] Well, first time, I was like, what?

[350] And then I had no fan for her.

[351] But I mean, she was big and tough and sweat pouring down.

[352] And she said, bring us a fan.

[353] And I was like, but if you have this light, your children can study, you can work at night.

[354] She was like, we work enough.

[355] Give me a fan.

[356] And I was like, oh, God.

[357] But I don't.

[358] But I I called our energy guys.

[359] I was like, you want to sell in Pakistan?

[360] You got to get fans.

[361] Yeah, yeah.

[362] And the other cool thing in terms of listening to people rather than deciding what poor people need is we all assumed that if you got people electricity and light, their children would do better in school.

[363] But if you live in a place that's 125 degrees in the day and 118 at night, the women tell us that the children actually do better if they have a fan than if they have a light.

[364] Because the fan keeps the bugs out.

[365] The kids can sleep.

[366] Yeah.

[367] So you learn so much.

[368] You just have to be on yourself at all time that you don't know what's best for people.

[369] Because you have data often in your corner.

[370] You have a lot of reasons you could be convicted at what they need.

[371] Yeah.

[372] And I'm not, I believe, that the community always knows.

[373] Sure.

[374] Because they sometimes don't have any information.

[375] The question of who decides is, I think, the biggest moral question that we have and we always have to be asking.

[376] You got to know who is the community.

[377] Who is speaking to you in terms of deciding?

[378] So I'm not, oh, let's do anything that the community says, let's have a relationship.

[379] Let's share what we know and can give to each other to make real change.

[380] And I think it's in that interaction that you plant the seats of dignity, not just of low -income people, but of all of our dignity.

[381] And that's where the magic starts.

[382] Back to success, one of the great moments in my life was sitting in a Rajashtani community with all these women who had delight, solar lights, little ones that some of them were carrying them like they had bangles.

[383] I said, tell me why you had the courage to change from kerosene light lanterns to solar.

[384] I heard all the normal answers.

[385] And then one woman said, I don't feel stress.

[386] And I said, what do you mean you don't feel stress?

[387] And she said, well, when I had a kerosene lantern, I would always be nervous that my children might topple it over and get hurt.

[388] And now I don't have that fear.

[389] And I said, well, that's really interesting because the young man who started this company, Sam, was living in Benin, a West African village.

[390] And his neighbor's kerosene lantern topped over and burned down the house in almost.

[391] killed his eldest son.

[392] And that's why he started this company.

[393] And she looked at me and her eyes filled up with tears.

[394] And she said, please, madam, thank that young man for me. And that for me was like, all right, this is success.

[395] Yeah.

[396] Sam's still hustling.

[397] And Ned Toes and his partner, they're getting by, you know, but they're not like billionaires.

[398] Right, right, right.

[399] But they have built a company that has changed the world.

[400] That is success.

[401] And he went to Stanford Business School.

[402] And I've been calling all these deans of the business schools to be like, why aren't we celebrating those in individuals that are choosing to use their skills, whatever their skills, it could be your skills, my skills, to fundamentally change the lives and release the energies of other human beings.

[403] Why aren't we celebrating them?

[404] Okay, so here's where the rubber meets the road between you and I. Because I think it would be almost impossible to separate out what our definition of success is from the media we consume from the time we're born.

[405] And that's through TV, movies, commercials, increasingly Instagram, all these other outlets, and they generally have to abide by the rules of story.

[406] They have to...

[407] Oh, we are the stories we tell.

[408] That's right.

[409] It's imperative.

[410] What I immediately think is like, well, we've got to start making heroes in our stories out of people that have done more than just accumulated some money or had sex with the most amount of people or whatever the thing is or want to race.

[411] And so I'm like, okay, there needs to be a shift where we're We're glorifying, for lack of better word, and we're presenting an example to people who are consuming media of some other definition of success.

[412] I'm up for this, and I'm just trying to wrap my head around how we start focusing on that.

[413] There are stories like that that penetrate, but then I think people think of them as fairy tale story.

[414] Like, no one thinks, and then I can do that, too.

[415] It's like, oh, that's a one -off person in life.

[416] But don't you think your generation is more open to it than for us?

[417] certain.

[418] Yes.

[419] Because I really see that.

[420] I mean, you look at Greta.

[421] She's a hero.

[422] Yeah.

[423] Malala.

[424] She's a hero.

[425] And so I actually think that in the new generations, and I'm not one that's like, oh, well, let the new generation solve all our problems.

[426] Like, we have to take accountability responsibility.

[427] But I think there's much more openness and there's a sickness with show me another rich person who can break every rule, not be held accountable, and we still put them on the pedestal of success.

[428] And so, yeah, Yeah, I wish that I could be the kind of storyteller that you are and that you know because we need media types to make superheroes not caricatures out of those individuals that have chosen to focus on solving some of the biggest problems of our lives.

[429] And what I know from now having worked with over 1 ,000 young people through Acumen Academy or School for Social Change, is that there is a generation that wants to do it, not because they want to be good, but because they want to be used.

[430] They want to be the smartest, toughest.

[431] And that's the story, in my opinion, that most needs to be explored.

[432] So our mutual friend Adam Grant, he and I have argued many times about selfishness and selflessness.

[433] I'm of the opinion there's no such thing as a selfless act.

[434] He's of the opinion that there are.

[435] I don't think it's relevant whether we need to conclude whether it can be done.

[436] But what I can say is I need to speak to the me's because I don't believe I'm going to feel rewarded by donating all my time to something.

[437] Now, I've had it on micro levels with helping individuals.

[438] Like, that's something I can get into.

[439] That's something I've benefited.

[440] That's not true.

[441] All right.

[442] Tell me why.

[443] Because you spend all your time doing this, which is for others.

[444] And look at the people that he chooses to interview.

[445] I mostly interview y 'all, and I have a unique curiosity in y 'all, because you're so different than I am.

[446] And I really want to wrap my head around being motivated by the thing you're motivated by.

[447] And in the absence of that, I've got to try to figure out my road into it.

[448] in hopes of bringing the people like me along with me. Does that make any sense?

[449] I think it's okay to say, I enjoy this, so I'm going to use it for good.

[450] It doesn't have to be, I hate this, therefore it means it's service.

[451] I think service can be something you enjoy.

[452] Pleasureable.

[453] Yeah.

[454] I agree.

[455] My brother, Mike, is...

[456] He's gone on the other way, right?

[457] He's like a real capitalist.

[458] Yes.

[459] I mean, he's Bitcoin King kind of a guy.

[460] Right, right.

[461] We started when we were little arguing.

[462] do you go out, make a lot of money and then do good for the world, or do you just do good for the world?

[463] And he obviously went one way, I went another way.

[464] And we're still arguing and helping each other.

[465] What's been fascinating to me, because Mike has had public failures and done stupid things that he doesn't hide.

[466] And I think it's made him connect to other people, particularly people in the criminal justice system.

[467] And over time, just by taking little baby steps, he has seen how completely broken our criminal justice system is.

[468] And now he is an enormous advocate for reform.

[469] He is one of the biggest voices and funders.

[470] At his nonprofit, I think he's hired eight formerly incarcerated, or now they're calling them returning citizens.

[471] Okay, we always got to rebrand everything every few months.

[472] These guys are unbelievable.

[473] And my brother is not a saint.

[474] Right, right, right, right, right, yeah.

[475] He makes messes, he's tough.

[476] He has big parties.

[477] My team is like, did you go to that party?

[478] I'm like, uh, we're family.

[479] And so I'm not asking people to be suddenly like saintly.

[480] Right.

[481] My side of the street has a big chip on our shoulder.

[482] Every time you do good, we feel judged by you.

[483] Rather than what's the world we all want our kids to grow up in?

[484] I know, I know.

[485] It's so stupid.

[486] We need everybody.

[487] That is the point.

[488] I have a question about, because all I can think about now is homeless people here, specifically in L .A. It's so hard.

[489] And when you're talking about listening to the community and the woman's saying, I don't want a light, and you know she needs a light, this is all tied into the homeless unhoused.

[490] Unhoused crisis, specifically, I think here.

[491] We just rebranded that here.

[492] Yeah.

[493] But it feels so overwhelming.

[494] Obviously, it is.

[495] No one has a good answer.

[496] So, again, I believe in entrepreneurs.

[497] I think these problems are too big to come in from the top down and say, here's how we're going to solve it.

[498] Yeah.

[499] Stay tuned for more armchair expert If you dare What's up guys?

[500] It's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest Okay, every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation And I don't mean just friends I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox The list goes on So follow, watch and listen to Baby This is Kiki Palmer on the one or wherever you get your podcast.

[501] We've all been there.

[502] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[503] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[504] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[505] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

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[509] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[510] There's a great entrepreneur if you don't know him in L. you both should know him and possibly talk to him.

[511] His name is Sam Polk, started to understand the whole idea of food deserts, that when you live in the inner city, there's no food that you can afford.

[512] What food is there is of terrible value and super expensive.

[513] And so he did what a lot of people do and started a nonprofit and sell, well, this is good, can train women, but big deal, not solving the problem.

[514] And so we decided to start a fast, nutritious, healthy restaurant called, every table.

[515] We were early investor.

[516] They built it to eight restaurants.

[517] But the guy is driven to solve the problem, right?

[518] He's not there to just like be the richest or the most famous.

[519] And so - But he also probably loves to scale.

[520] Well, he's a business guy.

[521] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[522] We need ambitious people to solve problems.

[523] And that is Sam Polk.

[524] And so gets it to eight.

[525] First day of lockdown sends out a tweet that to say, our mission is get people healthy food.

[526] If you need food, we'll deliver it.

[527] If you can't afford.

[528] afford it, we'll deliver it anyway.

[529] And if you're willing to pay it forward, here's a link.

[530] Overnight, all these not rich people started to support their neighbors.

[531] And then they partnered with government.

[532] Eight million meals have been served by every table since the beginning of the pandemic.

[533] And Sam's always wanted to franchise this thing and make sure that his franchisees come from the community.

[534] And then if you look at who owns franchises across the United States, there aren't a lot of black and brown franchisees.

[535] And so he built every table academy to train employees in what it means to run a franchise.

[536] One of his franchisees was unhoused when she started working at every table.

[537] And to hear her talk about, you know, I'm going to be a job creator.

[538] It starts to make us think about how we could solve problems in this country.

[539] And I also think it could help us get beyond talk about language.

[540] You know, it's government.

[541] It's private sector.

[542] Democratic, it's Republican.

[543] It's like, no, what we're good at in America is entrepreneurship.

[544] What we're good at is solving problems.

[545] We sort of have forgotten that.

[546] Okay, so in the manifesto for a moral revolution, you have three pillars.

[547] One of them is moral imagination and that we talked about, which is like seeing people's equal.

[548] You're not idealizing them.

[549] You're not pitying them.

[550] Holding opposing views.

[551] Now, this is so critical, in my opinion.

[552] Why is this such an important aspect to your work?

[553] I said in the beginning that my tribe is the tribe of builders.

[554] It's the tribe of people who don't just see what's wrong but are focused on what could be right and then go build it.

[555] That building is not a path of purity.

[556] That building requires constantly holding these opposing values and tension.

[557] You need to make your company profitable.

[558] But if that's what drives you, you're going to drop purpose.

[559] So you've got to hold that with purpose.

[560] You're going to have to be making compromises along the way that don't destroy the core of your own integrity.

[561] But for instance, I got a call when we were looking at a sugar factory in a feudal farming, some of the poorest farmers on the planet, that we're now going to be able to get out of bondage and have a real opportunity.

[562] And a potential donor called me. It was like, why are you destroying the people here with sugar?

[563] I was like, well, do you ever have sugar in any of your food?

[564] Like seriously?

[565] Are we really having this conversation?

[566] And so would that be my first choice for an industry to get involved in?

[567] No. But compared to what problems are we trying to solve?

[568] And so I think we've gotten to a point where we're not listening to each other.

[569] We fling opinions at each other and we don't create the time to ask people to talk about the principles on which they are standing.

[570] And that's actually why we created Acumen Academy because all of the nations that we work in, not just the United States, are at great risk of tearing themselves apart.

[571] Yeah, we don't have a monopoly on that quality.

[572] No, we do not.

[573] And so what we did with Academy was go in and find these younger change makers across race, class, ethnicity, religion, ideology.

[574] And so we'll bring people together and do readings, everybody from Plato to Martin Luther King, Havel, et cetera, and ask the group to have the really hard questions around freedom and responsibility.

[575] and learn how to sometimes wildly disagree in a way that creates space.

[576] What's frightening in this moment of social media is how easy it is to fling mud, shame, destroy without having any responsibility or accountability for actually making things right.

[577] Yeah, being only in the work of destroying people and ideas, where is the productivity?

[578] The contribution, it can't be the destruction of your opposing view.

[579] And that would be it.

[580] No. One of my favorite lines in Sufi poetry is by Rumi, where he says, out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field.

[581] I'll meet you there.

[582] Yeah, I like that.

[583] I like that a lot.

[584] Now, you say that we have to use markets without being seduced by them.

[585] And you also have this notion of patient capital.

[586] You have an example.

[587] You invested in these folks that got into the chocolate industry.

[588] It's a cabillion dollar industry, but the farmers themselves make one cent.

[589] they decided they would offer these people maybe some partner share, you know, some kind of ownership.

[590] Their profits aren't as big, but there is a longer play that ultimately will probably yield just as favorable.

[591] So here's one of my current soapboxes I'm on.

[592] We're seeing it now in this really fascinating period where we're potentially getting close to higher wages, but not through unionization, through I'm not dealing it, which is really interesting.

[593] And I think is fantastic.

[594] I'm very pro, just the steady increase in the middle class.

[595] But the fundamental thing that's got to change is we have to get more comfortable with corporations having a different profit margin.

[596] And you wonder, is there a shift in what is success as well?

[597] You do see another generation saying, I don't want that job, doesn't have purpose.

[598] It's not focused on sustainability.

[599] I'm not doing it.

[600] And there's an article in the New York Times today about business school graduates who are choosing to have less paying jobs because of higher levels of purpose.

[601] So I find it really hopeful.

[602] I know there's a conversation with corporate leaders as well, some.

[603] You can argue it's still more on the edges, but it's changing.

[604] And change in innovation always happens at the edges.

[605] And so you talked about chocolate, and we also have a coffee company.

[606] In the commodities world, chocolate is a really, really tough industry where you still have a lot of slave labor.

[607] But in coffee, you have a lot of farmers that can't cover their costs.

[608] And our company, Azahar, started by determining what the farmers would earn.

[609] and then they built their whole supply chain based on that.

[610] And they grew to a $10 million company.

[611] It's a real model for what could be.

[612] Here's what's really exciting.

[613] The entrepreneur, Tyler Youngblood, is hell -bent on changing the coffee industry.

[614] And so he's created a sustainable buyer's guide.

[615] So he can show you in any part of Columbia what the farmers could be earning if you pay just the global commodities price, which is at the floor, if you pay a minimum wage, or if you pay what he calls the sustainable buyer's price, which is essentially, living wage.

[616] 30 % of the big buyers are choosing to pay the living wage.

[617] So that's also showing you that at the top of the corporations, you have decision makers who are willing to either absorb the price or share it with a consumer.

[618] Right.

[619] And that gives me real hope.

[620] Yeah.

[621] It's not making you less cynical.

[622] No, no, no, no. I just think it's my job to find out what the carrot is for even the worst individual making that decision.

[623] So the person that's looking at three different coffee prices, Maybe they don't care about other human beings.

[624] Let's just assume worst case scenario.

[625] I then go, okay, well, another way to skin that cat is the consumer has to vote pretty clearly with their dollar.

[626] Well, and we have to ask ourselves how change happens.

[627] There's the short term and there's the long term.

[628] Long term, I feel the writing is on the wall.

[629] Given the generational shift, given the climate crisis is here, we can't any longer say that shareholder capitalism is the great way to go.

[630] That conversation in 10 years has fundamentally.

[631] shifted.

[632] I would predict that in the next 10 to 20 years, you won't be able to run a corporation if it isn't clear that you are doing so with sustainability, a sense of purpose, because you won't be able to have employees, you won't be able to have customers and your shareholders.

[633] Look at Engine 1, putting three environmentalists on the board of Exxon.

[634] It gives me real hope.

[635] In the short term, we still need the business models and the role models.

[636] And that's my job.

[637] I want to find those individuals.

[638] And we often say, well, only the privilege.

[639] can afford to pay.

[640] Only the privilege can do this.

[641] That is not my experience.

[642] I work in some of the poorest communities on the planet, and it blows my mind to see young people who, by many definitions, have nothing, just show us all up by deciding that they're going to clean and green their city, or they're going to join a company like Delight, and before they go to college, they're going to make sure that everybody in their village gets electricity.

[643] Just a level of wanting to be part of change.

[644] It just excites me. Yeah, but I do think you are one of the unicorns, as is Bill Gates, someone who can straddle these things.

[645] There are plenty of people on the far left and the far right of this debate, and there's very few people going, okay, I'm going to make this work.

[646] I loved Bill Gates' climate change book.

[647] It's the first one I ever was exposed to that I like because it wasn't shame forward.

[648] I've never seen shame get anybody on board to be with the change.

[649] I love when Adam Grant says, instead of always asking people also why, we can ask them how, when there is somebody on the other side, so that we can understand where a person sits.

[650] Because we've got to pull a lot of people over to get on with the program that is a world that puts our humanity in the earth at the center, not just money.

[651] We've got to make it look sexy here in Hollywood.

[652] I think that's our role.

[653] That's your guy's job.

[654] I mean, I'm so bad at that.

[655] You got to make it look cool and sexy.

[656] Like somehow, you got to imagine Schwarzenegger executing one of these plans.

[657] We might have to get people over, like if you saw some of these young Nigerians and Kenyans and Colombians and Americans and what they're doing and the joy and they're killing themselves to do this work, but they will dance all night.

[658] Well, one of the fundamental aspects, and you use the word several times here today, is trust.

[659] And so I guess I have a particular compassion for people who grew up in a family environment, maybe in a town, maybe in some population where their benevolence was always exploited.

[660] they were victimized.

[661] This is a big chunk of the country that has had an opposite experience with being taken advantage of.

[662] Although my experience of being with people who have very few resources is that that's where you often find the most generosity, including in the United States.

[663] And again, looking at the returning citizens the formerly incarcerated, I so often find the opposite of what you're saying.

[664] Yeah, and I totally agree with you.

[665] I guess what I'm saying is we interviewed Meta World Peace.

[666] This is an NBA basketball player.

[667] Ron Artez, he famously went into the crowd and got into a fight with some of the members that have been throwing drinks at him.

[668] He grew up in Queensbridge projects.

[669] He watched someone get stabbed through the heart with a leg of a table at a basketball game.

[670] People shot at the court.

[671] So where that human being comes from, and you're telling him that there's great esteem on the other side of helping everyone around him, we must account for that.

[672] Absolutely.

[673] But the counterpoint is I truly believe in.

[674] And remember, not only did I go through a genocide, but one of my colleagues and co -founders was a planner of the genocide.

[675] So I'm not sitting here thinking that there are angels and there are monsters.

[676] Right, right, right.

[677] I believe that there's an angel and a monster in every single one of us and that all of these systems have within them angelic and monstrous elements.

[678] That said, I have seen for all my life that people yearn to be good.

[679] And I think everyone can get there if they trust.

[680] And we can build trust, but it is a lot.

[681] long road.

[682] Yeah, yeah.

[683] You won't swore just now.

[684] Were you going to drop freaking on us?

[685] A little bit.

[686] Yeah.

[687] I can't believe he did that.

[688] Meta World Peace, the reality is he does help people.

[689] The person you use as an example is actually an example for the other side because he has seen the worst, experienced the worst, and he is volunteering at girls basketball games to help.

[690] Well, I would argue, though, it took this incredible gift that put on.

[691] in his lap, which is the MBA, and getting to come out of that and actually feel safe like he's not fighting just to survive.

[692] And then through that new point of view going like, oh, not only am I okay, but now I think I have extra to help someone.

[693] So there's a bunch of people that were met as colleagues that went to jail or they didn't go to the NBA.

[694] So it's like they grew up in literally who can swim to the top of this barrel and get air.

[695] And then asking that person like, hey, by the way, you should be worried about other people.

[696] Is it bigger ass than somebody who grew up But in some ways, and thank you for helping me, we'll corner him soon enough, but in some ways, I mean, this is at the heart of what Acumen's work has been is dignity.

[697] In some ways, what you're saying is what I deeply believe is that each of us want to have more agency over our lives.

[698] And building that trust is part of building societies where everyone has that agency.

[699] There is no way but the hard way.

[700] And it's about starting one by one, system by system.

[701] I refuse to believe that there are some people that are so cynical.

[702] There are some people that are.

[703] Well, sure, there's white nationalists.

[704] We can't account for them.

[705] Right.

[706] They're way on the edges.

[707] Yeah, yeah.

[708] And it's dangerous because what I saw in the genocide is that that becomes a virus that spreads.

[709] Yeah.

[710] However, most people, if you take the time to listen to them, they'll talk.

[711] They'll be seen.

[712] And that in and of itself is a contribution we can each make.

[713] So I just can't go to a place where I think there's all these cynical people that don't believe than anybody's good out there.

[714] I actually think that that's not human nature.

[715] Look at right after 9 -11, all you saw was goodness.

[716] Look at the bombing of the UK where Hitler thought he would destroy and break the spirit of people.

[717] Everybody helped each other.

[718] There's one key ingredient to both of those examples, which is it forced everyone in the U .S. to see themselves as us, and then now there was them.

[719] All of a sudden, all of our petty little distinctions we make got neutralized, and And same with England.

[720] Whatever thing they were defining themselves class -wise, status -wise, socioeconomic, they're all getting bombed.

[721] Now we're all in this together.

[722] So it's like it was this forced catalyst to recognize we are us.

[723] But then maybe the real challenge for this moment in history is for us to see the common enemy as poverty.

[724] To see the common enemy as the climate crisis and get behind solving it.

[725] I'm with you.

[726] I desire the same world you do.

[727] It's also starting a conversation about both the brokenness in all of us and the light inside all of us, because I think that a change in consciousness is part of this.

[728] I also think it's around, you know, the toughest guys, the toughest women, but this is not work for cissies.

[729] Yeah.

[730] This is work for the new heroes.

[731] Maybe it's not about, let me try to pitch you.

[732] Maybe I start by just trying to know you.

[733] I'm with that.

[734] I do urge people to read, though, the broken ladder.

[735] You read Broken Ladder?

[736] Oh, it's incredible.

[737] It's really intense dive into income inequality.

[738] And I think not unlike that racism injures us, even if we're not the victims in the most general sense of it.

[739] Similarly, the broken ladder really points out that, you know, this thing is injuring all of us.

[740] Like, if I can only appeal to one's own selfish interest to find out how this income inequality is affecting you, even if you're on the upper side of it.

[741] I definitely have treated.

[742] I often say that maybe the most important thing I've learned is that we don't get dignity as a human race till all of us get dignity.

[743] I don't think I really understood what that meant for a lot of my life, that it really truly is what you're saying.

[744] Yeah.

[745] That when your kids see people on the streets, it hurts all of us.

[746] It's such an interesting thing to try to explain to your kids.

[747] I mean, that's all of us.

[748] And so how do we bring that, you know, the word meta, that metaphysical, that spiritual, that we are.

[749] Made of stars.

[750] We're of the earth.

[751] We are of each other.

[752] And only when we figure that piece out, do we actually build that world.

[753] If you look at the old people, and I'm starting to move quickly into that category, who are the most sparkly.

[754] They're the people who gave of themselves, who tried and failed and focused on solving the big problems of our day or the little problems of our day.

[755] They said, what am I doing to help the people around me feel better, get more whole, have more agency.

[756] Yeah.

[757] It's the dreamiest state one can hit.

[758] before going to bed.

[759] Like when you go to bed in one of those things happen, for me, it's always more like sobriety related.

[760] And I'll be like, oh, fuck, yeah.

[761] They're coming back tomorrow.

[762] Whatever the thing is, yeah, it just feels infinitely better in a selfish way.

[763] The harder stuff is the stuff that feels the best when you got through it, right?

[764] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[765] Yeah, more Paul Bloom suffering.

[766] We need it.

[767] Okay, well, I hope everyone follows your lead.

[768] I want what you have.

[769] You're making this sexy.

[770] I want what you have.

[771] I want to go to bed at night and be able to tell a story you get to, tell about your life.

[772] I like that.

[773] I think we've cracked it a bit.

[774] I do think it is an adventure.

[775] It is the greatest adventure.

[776] Yeah, yeah.

[777] And if you look at Jane Goodall, who doesn't shame anybody, that was a pretty cool contribution, woman's made.

[778] Yes, big time.

[779] But I do think that this world, that you have to confront your own humanity and the humanity of other people, too.

[780] Bridgett Kipling, who I think may have been canceled at some point a long way, but he, um, his poem, if, you know, if that you could walk with kings and sit with beggars.

[781] Plato says, a nation honors what it cultivates.

[782] We need to cultivate that spirit.

[783] Yeah.

[784] And it starts with little kids.

[785] Yeah, we need like a, we need a money system that tabulates how many people you've helped changed their life.

[786] We're going to have one, I think.

[787] Yeah, that's part of the puzzle.

[788] Because we're status hungry little social primates.

[789] We can't escape that.

[790] We've got to be pragmatic about this.

[791] We do.

[792] Yeah, we got to give people some spotlight for being radical.

[793] Our fellows in Colombia who work in post -conflict, they have a lot of reasons to be cynical, right?

[794] 50 years of civil war, nobody trusts anybody.

[795] Yeah.

[796] They've created a currency using blockchain that is all about bartering for goodness.

[797] And so it's a whole pay it forward.

[798] We haven't taken it to the globe yet.

[799] I want to, but they're still testing it just in Colombia.

[800] But my bet is we're going to see more and more of these kinds of innovations.

[801] And I'll tell you one other story, just of like, goodness.

[802] So pandemic, a lot of dark happened.

[803] And we saw a lot of selfishness and the United States and other countries hoarding the vaccines while people in the developing world are still without.

[804] And we saw everyday citizens just go to another level of heroicism and trust.

[805] And so I and my team, we reached out to some of the wealthy people of our community and said, look, Acumen always raises philanthropy.

[806] And then we make equity investments and loans.

[807] We don't make grants.

[808] But right now we need grants because if we don't get money to these companies, they're going to have to fire their people and then we're going to have to build food banks, keep them on payroll.

[809] And so so many people came forward and just gave money.

[810] And the stuff that some of these entrepreneurs did just blew my mind to fundamentally change systems.

[811] Then India had its second wave of COVID.

[812] And my country director called me and said, at this point, it's not that our companies need money, our fellows and our entrepreneurs.

[813] entrepreneurs are seeing their family members die, they have no resources, they're completely burnt out.

[814] How would you feel about using the money that we have left from our emergency fund to give people money just so they get through?

[815] Yeah.

[816] I knew who had given the money.

[817] I knew I could ask and I was like, let's do it.

[818] As long as you build an accountability system in.

[819] And then a guy who is part of our larger community called me and said, I really want to help India.

[820] What can I do?

[821] And I said, look, I can tell you the organizations you should give money to because we've decided that we're going to use the money we have just to help people personally.

[822] And so I really appreciate it.

[823] But here are three other organizations.

[824] And he said, I want to double the money you have because this emergency is not ending.

[825] And if you trust them and I trust you, I know the money will go to good use.

[826] And I was so blown away that these like strangers helping strangers across the world purely based on trust.

[827] Yeah.

[828] And then what that did is then these fellows decided they didn't want a grant, that they would give whatever they could back.

[829] Some couldn't.

[830] But so far, 70 % of the money has come back so that it could be a pay -it -forward fund.

[831] Oh, man. Right?

[832] So I think we underestimate what it could be if we had role models that were taking these flyers and assuming goodness.

[833] Again, not just because it's the right thing to do, but at the same time, our.

[834] 100 companies have built entire new industries, have impacted 400 million people.

[835] Our little malaria bed net company that started, we invested in probably 2003 in Africa where nobody thought you could really manufacture in a way that would have any throughput rates like Asia has made 30 million bed nets every year.

[836] 15 % of the global supply.

[837] Bill Gates focused on malaria has really been supported by one malaria bet net company out of Tanzania, 10 ,000 jobs, mostly for women.

[838] Oh, wow.

[839] So there's an economic, hard reality that goes with it.

[840] I'll also add, the more and more we shift all these decisions to women, the better the outcomes are going to be.

[841] I'll say it.

[842] I like that.

[843] Are you denying that one?

[844] Nope.

[845] I'm on board with that.

[846] I'm on board.

[847] Well, Jacqueline, this has been so wonderful, and I'm pretty in awe of what you've done since leaving Chase.

[848] I just can't imagine that if you had stayed, I'd be celebrating you as much, so I don't know.

[849] It's the right move.

[850] Yeah.

[851] It's so great to meet you.

[852] Eyes are mesmerizing.

[853] Keep them.

[854] I don't know if you had any plans.

[855] New contact lenses.

[856] Yeah.

[857] You know, augmentation, replacement.

[858] So great to meet you.

[859] So great to talk with you.

[860] And I hope everyone checks out your book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution.

[861] Check it out.

[862] And, yeah, start just being open to the idea of thinking how you might be able to get involved in some way.

[863] It doesn't have to cost you.

[864] I too will think of this.

[865] Monica, it's so good to see you.

[866] And I love the intergenerational.

[867] I'm older than I look, though.

[868] I'm 34.

[869] Still, you're a full Jenny below me. But even my generation, there's another generation.

[870] I was going to say your generation actually doesn't have that radical thinking.

[871] Give me the 17 to 21 -year -olds.

[872] Wow.

[873] Exactly.

[874] And the stuff they're coming forward with were like, Chalkin, could you help us do this?

[875] And I'm like, oh, my God, give these guys.

[876] So cool.

[877] Just give them runway.

[878] They know that if they don't get this thing done, they're dead.

[879] Yeah.

[880] And they shouldn't be dead because this climate.

[881] Fries.

[882] Right?

[883] And we have to help them.

[884] We have to fund them.

[885] We have to support them.

[886] We have to mentor them.

[887] We have to celebrate them.

[888] They can build a world that is so much freer, fairer, more beautiful and more sustainable than what we have today.

[889] That's encouraging.

[890] I'm on the fence about them.

[891] Hey, look.

[892] It could go either way, though.

[893] We're on a precipice of peril and possibility.

[894] And it could go to that side, which is my story and I'm sticking to it.

[895] Or we could get more divided more divisive, more ugly, less sustainable, and fry.

[896] Please, give me door number one.

[897] I mean, yes, the dream goal is we extend our in -group to the whole planet, but let's minimally start in your state, then start in your country, then start, you know.

[898] Or in some cases, in your home.

[899] Yeah.

[900] Oh, gosh, yeah.

[901] Absolutely.

[902] It will be all of us, and it's our choice.

[903] Yeah.

[904] Well, support Ackerman, read your book, and I hope you'll come back.

[905] This was so fun.

[906] I will totally come back.

[907] I so enjoy meeting both of you.

[908] You guys are awesome.

[909] Thank you so much.

[910] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[911] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[912] Recording this little early, so.

[913] Yeah, so forgive our lack of acknowledgement of something enormously significant happened.

[914] Yeah.

[915] Other than what's already enormously significant, which has happened.

[916] Yeah.

[917] Okay, so you're fresh from a follow.

[918] Yes, I got a facial, microneedling.

[919] Micronedling, fuzzle, and you initially claimed you were bleeding, which was exciting.

[920] I was kidding.

[921] Yeah.

[922] But it is teeny tiny needles.

[923] Oh, mini needles for a mini mouse?

[924] Minature needles for a miniature mouse.

[925] And they penetrate the surface of the skin.

[926] And then they, what, activate healing and collagen and plumping and girthing, reverse backs?

[927] The products can get deep.

[928] Oh, penetrates.

[929] Yeah.

[930] Okay.

[931] It can get real deep.

[932] It can really marinate.

[933] Yeah.

[934] Wow.

[935] The things we're doing these days.

[936] I know.

[937] Cutting our faces up.

[938] Well, yeah.

[939] I mean, I guess the proof's in the pudding, but it seems crazy.

[940] It's not invasive or anything.

[941] Well, needles through the skin, so the serum will seep in.

[942] Just tedious.

[943] Like, you could do it at home.

[944] Should I do it at home?

[945] You know me. I want to push extra hard because if a little bit of a hole is good for seeping and a lot of a bit of a hole probably.

[946] I know.

[947] That's why you can't do it.

[948] Do I look red?

[949] Mm -mm.

[950] Oh, really?

[951] Not at all.

[952] Your cheeks look a little puffy, though.

[953] Like there might be some light swelling of your cheeks.

[954] Yeah, sure.

[955] Is that common?

[956] That's from the blood.

[957] You look extra kid -like right now.

[958] Do you think so, Rob?

[959] Let's see it a little bit.

[960] Yeah.

[961] See the extra?

[962] It's probably healing.

[963] Take right through here and here.

[964] You didn't get a filler.

[965] It does feel hot.

[966] No. Oh, okay.

[967] No. Okay.

[968] You do cheek fillers?

[969] Oh, yeah.

[970] People do all.

[971] Well, do people have ass cheek fillers?

[972] The curiosity for me is, are guys getting prick fillers?

[973] No. And Google it at Google.

[974] Actually, probably.

[975] Yeah, if everyone's making things fatter and bigger and plumber and wouldn't a guy, most guys want more plumpness and fatness.

[976] I guess.

[977] I think that would get in the way reproductively.

[978] Well, no, you don't put any filler in your Vaz deference.

[979] It might get in there on accident.

[980] Well, no, you've been fallow fill.

[981] Fallow fill.

[982] Oh, my goodness.

[983] No pumps, no pills.

[984] Medically administered penile girth enhancement.

[985] Oh, my gosh.

[986] This is thrilling.

[987] I don't know about this.

[988] Rob, should we get this procedure?

[989] Some before and after photos.

[990] Oh, my God.

[991] We'll keep those up after this recording.

[992] We're not recommending this.

[993] I'm just saying that.

[994] No, no, no. But we will be the canaries in the coal mine.

[995] And we'll go get some baseball bats and see.

[996] What if do you think there's any Christians that get a filler of a cross on their shaft or conversely some Jewish folks that get a star of David on the head of their penis and filler?

[997] Could they just get tattoos?

[998] Why do they have to have filler?

[999] Well, because then you're feeling the strength of the...

[1000] Oh, pulsing?

[1001] Well, no, just the...

[1002] The strength of the Lord?

[1003] Yes, yes.

[1004] Oh, okay.

[1005] Okay, this is a ding, ding, ding, because after my facial, Neiman's is across the street.

[1006] Neiman Marcus?

[1007] Yeah.

[1008] You just call it Neiman's.

[1009] You just call it Neiman's if you're on the know.

[1010] Yeah.

[1011] Yeah, like crashers.

[1012] Yeah, exactly.

[1013] I'm more in the know about Neiman's than Crashers.

[1014] That took me a second.

[1015] Wedding Crashers.

[1016] Yeah.

[1017] But there was a sweater that I wanted from the row, Ding, Ding, Ding.

[1018] Oh, my gosh.

[1019] Wow.

[1020] It feels like we're sponsored by them, but we just aren't.

[1021] I wish.

[1022] Oh, boy.

[1023] I didn't get it, but I want it.

[1024] Nice restraint.

[1025] I know.

[1026] Let me see your hands.

[1027] Are you still wearing that banging ring?

[1028] Yeah, not today.

[1029] Oh, wow.

[1030] So you're not getting greedy.

[1031] with it.

[1032] Like, if I find something I like, I just wear it every day.

[1033] It's not an everyday ring.

[1034] How so?

[1035] It's just really sparkly.

[1036] Oh.

[1037] And today I'm looking really cash.

[1038] I got you.

[1039] It was too flashy for your...

[1040] Yeah, for my ensemble.

[1041] There's a little weird choice, though, on your end, because you were going to Beverly Hills where you sometimes are triggered already that they don't take you seriously.

[1042] I was.

[1043] I went into a store today, and I was pretty women.

[1044] Yes.

[1045] Yeah.

[1046] I mean, probably not.

[1047] But in your mind, but also, you wore your most downplayed outfit.

[1048] Yeah.

[1049] Mixed messy.

[1050] You're like testing them.

[1051] Yeah.

[1052] Well, they don't know.

[1053] You know, they should be nice to everyone because they don't know.

[1054] They don't know that I almost bought that.

[1055] Actually, that lady was really, she did not pretty woman me. She thought I was going to buy it.

[1056] I felt like I let her down.

[1057] You pretty womaned her.

[1058] Yeah.

[1059] Yeah.

[1060] I feel guilty.

[1061] Let me ask you a question, though.

[1062] Do you think the salespeople should treat everyone the same?

[1063] Yes.

[1064] Of course.

[1065] Well, okay, let's go to the extreme so I can make my point.

[1066] You're at a Ferrari dealership.

[1067] Uh -huh.

[1068] You're a Ferrari salesman.

[1069] Uh -huh.

[1070] Someone comes in.

[1071] They can't buy a Ferrari.

[1072] How do they know?

[1073] Well, they don't.

[1074] But I'm saying assuming they know.

[1075] Okay.

[1076] If you know for certain someone...

[1077] That someone can't buy it.

[1078] Okay, then yes.

[1079] Don't think you're a little bit like, come on, man, you're wasting my time.

[1080] Yes.

[1081] You don't want to give them as much attention.

[1082] However...

[1083] It's not a museum.

[1084] Yeah, but I didn't say I can't buy anything in here.

[1085] Oh, no, no, we're trying.

[1086] I'm going to the extreme so we can see if there is a hiccup here.

[1087] If you're just in there to like look at stuff and you can't afford anything and you're not going to buy anything, then no, the salespeople probably don't need to give you the same attention.

[1088] They're going to get someone who's going to buy something.

[1089] Yeah, if I go to like a yacht and plane show and I'm strolling around, people should not waste their time talking to me. I'm not going to buy a yacht or a plane.

[1090] Okay.

[1091] I can't afford one.

[1092] G650 is like $65 million.

[1093] Oh, God.

[1094] And you got to have a 650 because if you want to travel intercontinentally.

[1095] Do you want to hear about my nasal cleanse?

[1096] Yes, please.

[1097] Because I put a pin in it.

[1098] I had walked in and I wanted to share it with you.

[1099] Because also I wanted to warn both of you that there may be big drips of water come out of my nose.

[1100] Oh, I can't wait.

[1101] Have you ever used a netty pot?

[1102] I've never.

[1103] Okay.

[1104] Have you, Rob?

[1105] Yeah, I have.

[1106] So I just found a new one.

[1107] Oh.

[1108] And I just used it for the first time.

[1109] I inaugural voyage in my nose.

[1110] In this song bitch, you fill up a squeasy water bottle.

[1111] Then you put a cap on it.

[1112] The cap has a nice little perfect, a cone.

[1113] like a silicone hook that goes perfectly in your nose.

[1114] You tilt the bottle upside down.

[1115] You don't have to do the bend over thing.

[1116] And then you put the saline solution in there.

[1117] And then you look yourself in the eye in the mirrors, stand up nice and erect and tall with the fall of filler.

[1118] And then squeeze.

[1119] And then it just rushes out the other nostril.

[1120] Wow.

[1121] What came out?

[1122] Sadly, not much.

[1123] It was really clear.

[1124] But I've been struggling with a ton of de brass up there.

[1125] Yeah.

[1126] A lot of clogged.

[1127] Oh, gosh.

[1128] Okay, now you talked about the row.

[1129] I got to give a shout out again to intake breathe.

[1130] Yeah.

[1131] Because I've only used them to work out and I love them.

[1132] And it crossed my mind, I'm going to wear it to bed.

[1133] Because I've had all this signage stuffage.

[1134] Yeah.

[1135] I wore it last night and it was the best night of my sleep in the last two months.

[1136] Oh, my God.

[1137] So I think my nose is clogged enough.

[1138] Then I'm having a little bit of hard time breathing through it at some periods in the night.

[1139] and then I kind of wake up because I got to switch to mouth breathing.

[1140] Yuck, hate it.

[1141] And then last night I slept like a little dolphin.

[1142] That's so lovely.

[1143] Or a baby beluga more accurately.

[1144] That's now a lifetime commitment.

[1145] I'm going to sleep with that every night.

[1146] Yeah, intake.

[1147] All right.

[1148] Good product.

[1149] So, this is Jacqueline.

[1150] Oh.

[1151] She said that you were a skeptic.

[1152] You said you were a cynic.

[1153] Yeah, yeah.

[1154] And I said I'm cynical.

[1155] Yeah, but I was just going to read the definition.

[1156] So a cynic, a person who believes that people are motivated purely by self -interest rather than acting for honorable or unselfish reasons.

[1157] Huh.

[1158] Well, that's a shitty definition of sin.

[1159] Okay, second definition.

[1160] A member of a school of ancient Greek philosophers marked by an ostentatious contempt for ease and pleasure.

[1161] Oh, that's interesting.

[1162] Contempt for ease and pleasure.

[1163] That's interesting.

[1164] Okay, and then the definition of skeptic, a person inclined to quote.

[1165] question or doubt accepted opinions.

[1166] Mm, okay, yeah.

[1167] Or, number two, an ancient or modern philosopher who denies the possibility of knowledge or even rational belief in some sphere.

[1168] Okay, back to cynic definition.

[1169] Okay.

[1170] I think the key there is their interpretation of the word selfish and mine.

[1171] Because we have a generalized pejorative, which is that person's selfish.

[1172] Yeah.

[1173] That means like they take, take, take, they don't give, give, give.

[1174] Now, I believe as an animal that animals are so.

[1175] self -interested in survival, in their own comfort, above all things.

[1176] Yes.

[1177] Now, I believe there's a way to act altruistically within that paradigm, but I just don't believe anyone puts other people ahead of themselves in any way, other than their children, maybe.

[1178] And even their children, putting them above themselves, is a selfish act in that they're the carrier of your genes.

[1179] Right.

[1180] I see the distinction.

[1181] But I think some people do.

[1182] I think it's rare.

[1183] You can, like, I have that opinion, but I had still pushing.

[1184] someone out of the way of a bus at the risk of getting hit or killed myself.

[1185] I have an image of myself selfishly.

[1186] I've constructed.

[1187] I have a definition of what I do in this life.

[1188] And it would include that.

[1189] It's just more complex.

[1190] There needs to be like six other words to encompass what selfishness would mean.

[1191] Kind of like the Inuit have like 80 words for snow.

[1192] Right.

[1193] Yeah.

[1194] The French have 30 different words for anal sex.

[1195] Oh, no, they don't.

[1196] I know.

[1197] Don't put that on, though.

[1198] Okay, how many companies does Acumen own?

[1199] She said 100.

[1200] According to this, we invest patient capital in businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives.

[1201] Acumen has invested more than $143 million in 145 companies.

[1202] Oh, okay.

[1203] That's a lot.

[1204] Yeah.

[1205] Okay.

[1206] Was Rudyard Kipling canceled?

[1207] Let's see.

[1208] Oh, wow.

[1209] There's questions that his poem, If, is racist.

[1210] The British -India -born writer and poet is seen as a controversial figure in modern times due to his imperialistic views.

[1211] I have such an image of what that was.

[1212] Like, that's someone in a white, like, hat, a wide -brimmed white hat, white linen clothing.

[1213] Of who he is?

[1214] Yeah, a colonialist in India.

[1215] Mm -hmm.

[1216] This is him.

[1217] Oh, well, I hope he wore a hat.

[1218] because he's bald as a cue ball.

[1219] He's bald, but he looks distinguished.

[1220] But he was down in a very high sun area.

[1221] Oh, right.

[1222] Yeah.

[1223] That's true.

[1224] He was out of his element.

[1225] At Manchester University, they painted over a wall mural of that poem and replaced it with still -I -rise by Maya Angelou.

[1226] So I guess, you know, it's a thing.

[1227] Sure.

[1228] He was born in Bombay, currently Mumbai.

[1229] Oh, I didn't know that change from Bombay to Mumbai.

[1230] Yep.

[1231] Bombay has a real, they branded it well in the 80s.

[1232] It had a very upscale exotic flair.

[1233] There was the Bombay Bicycle Club, a chain of restaurants.

[1234] There was one in Cancun, Mexico, that we ate at, and the garlic bread was off the charts, and it had a little cheese on it.

[1235] Wait, was it, was it an Indian restaurant?

[1236] Well, Bombay Bicycle Club, and the ceiling fans would be the kind of ceiling fans.

[1237] You have in India, that kind of colonial aesthetic.

[1238] Maybe Rosewood.

[1239] Probably.

[1240] Yeah.

[1241] It has loved it in there.

[1242] And I thought, my God, I want to go to Bombay.

[1243] It is elegant there.

[1244] But then they served garlic bread, like Italian.

[1245] Well, I can't remember exactly.

[1246] No, it wasn't an Indian restaurant.

[1247] Like, it didn't have curry and stuff.

[1248] That's what I'm asking.

[1249] Okay, no. Fuck, I don't want to misrepresent the Bombay Bicycle Club because, again, I loved it.

[1250] We went on, like, day two of our family vacation there, and we wanted to go back every single day.

[1251] I think you would have remembered if it was Indian food.

[1252] Yeah.

[1253] It's not.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] You have the menu, Rob?

[1256] Nachos.

[1257] Chili, burger, salads.

[1258] I mean, they have a...

[1259] Egg rolls.

[1260] Pad Thai fries.

[1261] What is that happening?

[1262] But do you have any iconography in there?

[1263] Do you see any, like, branding?

[1264] It's really nice.

[1265] There's a flamingo and a bike.

[1266] Yeah, elegant, right?

[1267] A flamingo?

[1268] Like fine line drying.

[1269] This Bombay has nothing to do with the city in India.

[1270] But in my eight -year -old, well, I guess that was probably 12.

[1271] Well, my 12 -year -old mine, man, that was like, I wanted to go.

[1272] Oh.

[1273] A bunch of flamingos riding bicycles, garlic bread on every corner, nachos up the wazoo.

[1274] Yeah.

[1275] Oh, wow.

[1276] You know, there was a lot of restaurants, too, in my youth that had Oriental in the title.

[1277] I know.

[1278] Did you have any of those?

[1279] Well, there was a brand called Oriental Trading Company.

[1280] I'm not sure if it still exists, but it had, like, party decorations.

[1281] Now, I think you can, I think you can retain the name.

[1282] name Orient in your title, if you're specifically talking about items imported from the Orient, like a specific area within China.

[1283] Oh, maybe, yeah.

[1284] Obviously, you don't call people that.

[1285] We don't anymore, no. But we did.

[1286] We have to acknowledge that we did.

[1287] A few minutes ago.

[1288] Really a few minutes ago, like in my short baby lifetime.

[1289] Right.

[1290] Yeah.

[1291] Which you've returned to with your cheeks today.

[1292] Yeah, and now my eye feels like it's shutting.

[1293] Yeah.

[1294] Well, I think you're an an anaphylactic shock in the beginning.

[1295] stages.

[1296] Did she use a wasp stings as part of this collagen?

[1297] I wouldn't even care.

[1298] She knows what she's doing.

[1299] She is so good.

[1300] I will not say her name on here.

[1301] Yeah, that's smart because she'll get too overrun.

[1302] She'll get so booked up.

[1303] I was going to say like she worked your face like a job, which is a saying, but it actually did literally.

[1304] It is her job.

[1305] Yeah.

[1306] She had to write a paper for school.

[1307] She's like in also.

[1308] She's like, in.

[1309] Also, she's, she's.

[1310] So she wrote a paper on homelessness.

[1311] She was like, I interviewed a bunch of homeless people.

[1312] And then she read me her article.

[1313] Oh, wow.

[1314] And I was wearing a face mask, so, like, I had to say yes.

[1315] How long did it go on?

[1316] Along, but also, I was like, this is really good.

[1317] Yeah.

[1318] This is really well written.

[1319] But I didn't want to act too surprised.

[1320] Yes, exactly.

[1321] So it's just a lot going on in my facial.

[1322] Yeah.

[1323] And this, I guess, is the cynic in me or the skeptic.

[1324] Yeah.

[1325] Do you think maybe she just read an article she liked and told you she wrote it?

[1326] I don't know.

[1327] But also, like, you can be a really good writer and not be very verbal.

[1328] Oh, like, if you have severed vocal cords.

[1329] You should have pulled a Bray Brown and just said, I'd prefer to sitting silence.

[1330] No, I can't.

[1331] She will do a bad spell on my pace.

[1332] Bray probably gets bad service everywhere.

[1333] Yeah, you got to be careful.

[1334] I mean, I'm happy for her.

[1335] She has boundaries, but...

[1336] Yeah, you do have to know when to pull that out.

[1337] Yeah.

[1338] Also, she's so kind and nice, and I want her to feel good.

[1339] Okay, anywho.

[1340] Oh, that's actually it.

[1341] Oh, okay.

[1342] I mean, there is something here about young business school people taking lower paid job.

[1343] Like, millennials taking lower paid jobs in order to do good.

[1344] Millennials are Z -years or whatever.

[1345] I think we're now using millennial, a lot of us colloquially.

[1346] We are, because I'm a millennial.

[1347] Yeah.

[1348] Yeah, what is it?

[1349] Gen Zee.

[1350] My brother's a Zier.

[1351] Okay.

[1352] Wait, actually, no. He's a Z boy?

[1353] He is also a millennial.

[1354] Well, then.

[1355] I know.

[1356] This is the biggest generation ever.

[1357] Exactly.

[1358] That's why I don't like it.

[1359] Yeah.

[1360] It's very incomplete.

[1361] I think he's like the last year before it turns Z. Gen Y or millennials are 81 to 94 slash 6.

[1362] Yeah, my brother.

[1363] There's 96.

[1364] It stretched it a little bit.

[1365] Four Neal.

[1366] Yep.

[1367] And so 96 onward is Z?

[1368] Z is 97 to 2012.

[1369] And now we're in Generation Alpha, which is 2012 through 2025.

[1370] Both my girls are Generation Alpha.

[1371] Oh, that's cool.

[1372] Wait, I thought they were called Gen C for COVID.

[1373] Someone said that.

[1374] This might have been updated.

[1375] That was a real thing that people said.

[1376] Well, they did say it.

[1377] Yeah, yeah, but I don't think it was a real distinction.

[1378] I'm so gullible.

[1379] No. Don't worry.

[1380] That words aren't even in the dictionary.

[1381] I love you.

[1382] I love you.

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