Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] Experts on expert.

[2] I'm Dak Shepard.

[3] I'm joined by Erica Padman.

[4] Oh, no, Trigger.

[5] Oh, Trigger.

[6] Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[7] Well, you'll hear in the wrap -up world.

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[9] About Erica.

[10] When you co -host.

[11] I'm so excited.

[12] Today we have Reed Hoffman.

[13] Reed Hoffman is an entrepreneur and executive.

[14] He co -founded LinkedIn and is currently a partner at Greylock, where he focuses on early stage investing.

[15] He has a new book out called Matt.

[16] Masters of Scale, surprising truths from the world's most successful entrepreneurs.

[17] This was a really, really fun, super comprehensive conversation.

[18] Playful.

[19] Super playful.

[20] And all over the plate, you know, like dancing over here.

[21] It was really fun, yeah.

[22] And Reed is so damn knowledgeable.

[23] Brilliant.

[24] Yeah, really, really, brilliant.

[25] You're going to love Reed Hoffman.

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[30] Armchairexpertpod .com starring Erica Padman.

[31] Please enjoy Reed Hoffman.

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[35] you have a much better seat set up than I do which is crazy because you're a podcaster yes well actually I'm moving into a new house so it's still TVD but I think I may still even then be inspired by your seat well you know it's funny who are we talking to yesterday and they were they were shitting on my oh Anderson Cooper and we figured it out I think we figured it out I came from a very working class background.

[36] So this represents like, you fucking made it.

[37] You own a lazy boy?

[38] And for Anderson, it very much signaled like, this is a Philistine, which is also true on many accounts.

[39] And by the way, the two together is what's awesome.

[40] I'm hoping so.

[41] So are we talking to you in Palo Alto?

[42] Is that where you're at?

[43] I am up in Seattle.

[44] Oh, in Seattle.

[45] And what the hell are you doing there?

[46] Is that where you live?

[47] It's where I live right now.

[48] We escaped the wildfires because it was 450 parts per million smoke at our house in Silicon Valley.

[49] And then when we came up here, my better half said, we're living here because we had a vacation place up here.

[50] But when you get to call it zero parts per million in the air, and you have these long, glorious summer days.

[51] And we survived the winter.

[52] It works.

[53] We have our vacation place still, but we now have another place, which is this place.

[54] which is home.

[55] Okay.

[56] If memory serves me, I had a girlfriend for nine years that was from Marysville, Washington, and October, September, October is this sweet spot there, right?

[57] That's almost like summer.

[58] Well, frankly, it's great, but any time from, call it April through October, you get these long, glorious days, this greenery, this water, not too warm, et cetera, et and it's just glorious.

[59] Yeah, so you have a very specific type of personality or proclivities, right?

[60] So you're busy nonstop.

[61] You're a busy person, but that doesn't necessarily extend to, like, busy, like, you need to be walking the streets of your town.

[62] Would that be appropriate?

[63] I like to always be doing stuff so, like, I don't have hobbies, et cetera.

[64] And most of what I like doing is working with really smart people doing stuff.

[65] It could be a conversation where you're discovering something.

[66] It could be building a company.

[67] It could be figuring out how science should be amplified.

[68] It should be, and I think this is the first time you and I were put in touch, which was by Adam Grant, you know, trying to figure out politics, all of this kind of stuff.

[69] And we didn't have a chance to chat at Yellowstone, but I did see you make a trenchant comment or two from the back row.

[70] I have heard of stuff.

[71] So I've owned my embarrassment.

[72] I didn't speak on the correct topic.

[73] let's start there.

[74] I was definitely out of my lane, but I was just getting so fucking frustrated that it had been kind of monopolized by this one voice or one side of an argument.

[75] I lost my cool.

[76] My wife kept telling me, hey, watch your breathing.

[77] And I was like, oh, no, later, later.

[78] Yes, exactly.

[79] But it was fun.

[80] Yes, it was totally fun.

[81] So you as a kid, though, you were super into, like, role -playing games.

[82] Am I right to understand that being like Dungeons and Dragons and the old old school ones?

[83] Yeah.

[84] So it was a funny way that I discovered D &D, which is I was living with my dad.

[85] My parents divorced when I was very young.

[86] And my dad discovered a babysitter who would come over and babysit me, although, you know, I was nine.

[87] So I don't know why they still call it babysitting, kid sitting or whatever.

[88] Maybe it was a particular comment on me. Who knows?

[89] And this guy came over and had a great formula for dealing with young kids, which is, let's play Dungeons and Dragons.

[90] And I literally was like, oh my God, I didn't realize people could do this.

[91] And so promptly upon the next day, it was like, Dad, don't you have other things, like dates to go out on and stuff to do?

[92] Because you should rehire Michael, still remember his name, to, because we got to continue the quest.

[93] And so as a kid, I was enormously into everything from fantasy role -playing games.

[94] I actually did things like help publish supplements and game reviews.

[95] Yes, I'm in like 12, right?

[96] Yeah, Geekville, for sure.

[97] Yeah, yeah.

[98] Okay, but two unconventional things right out of the gates, which is, A, you live with dad.

[99] So I, too, am a child of divorce very young.

[100] But I live with mom, so that's unconventional.

[101] And then male babysitter also a bit unconventional.

[102] Yeah, and both awesome.

[103] Okay.

[104] Correct.

[105] You know, I mean, it's one of those things where many, many things that are considered to be rules are actually, in fact, heuristics.

[106] And while broadly speaking, they might be the best way to do things.

[107] The other way, on occasion, is spectacular.

[108] And so you should always stay alert to that in navigating life.

[109] We were just talking about this yesterday.

[110] Yeah, we had a long debate.

[111] Again, I don't think either of us would be patting each other on the back or ourselves on the back.

[112] I think it's just your nature.

[113] So my nature is like, I don't take anything at face value.

[114] I'm like reading something.

[115] I'm always recognizing a group of human beings in a building, put this thing together and that they have their own culture and their own thought process.

[116] You know, like, and that's just my nature, I think.

[117] And Monica, you like rules and order.

[118] Yeah, I grew up on rules and I was totally, they never bit me in the butt, really.

[119] Like, I never felt taken advantage of by them.

[120] Very lucky not to, but I'm fine with them.

[121] I mean, not to say, and I do want to be careful about this.

[122] Like, it's not that I'm not thinking critically about what's in front of me. I think I am.

[123] But my instinct is not to rebel against the rules.

[124] it's to like hear them.

[125] And so, Reed, I would say from my point of view, I think early on being dyslexic and having to go to the learning disabled room just kind of made me go like, well, this can't be the only system.

[126] Like if I'm a reject of this system, my own self -preservation makes me question the entire system.

[127] And I just wonder if there's anything in your childhood like that.

[128] Well, I think it's similar to the fact that I found the world to be super strange and odd and the best thing to do is to kind of join this fantastic land.

[129] All right.

[130] I wouldn't necessarily call it fantasy land.

[131] So, like, I would read tons of science fiction.

[132] When I got into board games and was thinking about strategy, I would literally walk to the public library and then read every book on military history and strategy, literally from A to Z in the Dewey Decimal System.

[133] He's like, ooh, got to get on top of this.

[134] And I think that was kind of try to create the world or to help create the world rather than just taking it as you find it.

[135] And it isn't, as Monica was saying, it's not exactly rebellion.

[136] It isn't like, not that.

[137] It's much as, like, shape it to push it in the direction you think as you go because it feels odd, alien.

[138] One of my uncles remembers that his entire interaction with me when I was five, and I don't think this is unique to me, but was asking why, right?

[139] Like literally every, every single, like, why?

[140] It's like, well, that's a blue, bus.

[141] Well, why is it blue?

[142] Well, because they painted a blue.

[143] Well, why did they paint it blue?

[144] Yeah.

[145] I think you and I have the same insufferable personality.

[146] But, like, really specifically, did you feel like a bit of an anomaly in the main status quo?

[147] Like, did you feel like this entire system's predicated on a skill set that I have a different skill set?

[148] I think what I did is I didn't see it as relevant until a while.

[149] And actually, the thing that made me begin to think of the system as relevant and beginning to play the kind of the system game was, like, I was trying to sort out, like, why are we here and what are we doing?

[150] And, you know, they'd say, and this is Spanish class.

[151] And you're like, okay.

[152] Like, that doesn't seem like something I need to engage in.

[153] And so literally, my dad hired a tutor because he was like, oh shit, this kid is like fucking up at school, like left, right, and which is like I literally, like, apparently I went to a French class and I would read science fiction books like on the desk while I was in the class.

[154] And when the teacher would ask me a question, I would say, jeun se pa. Which is?

[155] I don't know.

[156] Oh, okay, great.

[157] Catch all phrase.

[158] So it's like, I don't know.

[159] And so my dad looks at the F that I get in French.

[160] thinking French isn't that hard and hires a tutor.

[161] And the tutor was great.

[162] But what really was essential was, I was like, well, why did my dad hire a tutor?

[163] Oh, there's this after school thing.

[164] Like when you get out of high school and then something, oh, that's relevant.

[165] Right.

[166] Right, right, right.

[167] Let me start playing this game.

[168] Right.

[169] Yes, I agree.

[170] I can't start anything without knowing what the end goal is.

[171] Yeah, like, I feel allergic to busy work if I don't know what it's about.

[172] I imagine a lot of people that work at companies have that as a veiled feeling in general.

[173] Like, I guess that's what like Adam Grant's great at addressing is like giving you some ownership, some relevant, some one tiny pinky on the steering wheel or something.

[174] Yeah, core admission.

[175] This is what we're trying to achieve.

[176] This is why when you go home and tell your friends, family, colleagues, what you're doing, it's like, well, what we're doing at work is this really important thing.

[177] and this is the thing that I do that helps it.

[178] Yeah, you want them to be able to say that.

[179] Yes.

[180] And if you're not, they're really not going to put in good work.

[181] And they're not going to be really motivated.

[182] They're not going to be happy because it's part of the, no, no, why I'm here, what I do, that matters in the world.

[183] Sure.

[184] That's something that everyone should and can participate in.

[185] Okay, so how did you end up at this Putney School in Vermont?

[186] So I hit the independence bug early.

[187] So I kind of heard about from another high school friends that there was this thing called boarding school.

[188] And I went, ooh, boarding school.

[189] You can be on your own.

[190] Okay.

[191] Oh, my gosh.

[192] Okay, I have to pause you.

[193] I have to pause you.

[194] I have to just give you some backstory.

[195] We've been in about a five -week debate about this segment we saw in 60 minutes of this bizarre college in Utah.

[196] I don't know if you saw it.

[197] You're shaking your head like maybe.

[198] I think it's here in California.

[199] Is this Steve Springs?

[200] Yes.

[201] Yes.

[202] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[203] Okay.

[204] But I'm aware of Deep Springs.

[205] Okay.

[206] Well, wow.

[207] Okay, so California, stand corrected.

[208] You're aware of it.

[209] And so since we saw it, Monica, I don't want to underrepresent your position, but you're like, this guy feels like a cult.

[210] And I'm like, I don't know, it feels like a great time for them to do something other than what they're inevitably going to do the rest of their life.

[211] And we've had this long -standing debate.

[212] So when I read about this Putney school, I was like, this is fucking awesome because you basically attended a version of it.

[213] Oh.

[214] Yes.

[215] It was founded by a woman named Carmelita Hinton, who was part of a married pair that made the jungle gyms, was founded off the money from the jungle gym.

[216] Oh, wow.

[217] And the theory of the Putney School, which is awesome, is don't just train the mind, train as it were, the kind of spirit.

[218] And so some of that is everyone has to have a work task every quarter, and those vary.

[219] Those work tasks can be anything from working in the kitchen or dishes to working on the farm.

[220] Maple extraction, yeah?

[221] Yes, driving hawks and through the woods, rebuilding rock walls, whole stack and stuff.

[222] The worst one, which everyone has to do, this is basically when you're, when your first year there, you end up saddled with Winter Barn.

[223] Because Winter Barn is get up at 5 in the morning, identify a set of clothing that you will burn afterwards.

[224] Because the clothing will be just literally toxic, stand on its own and reek and fill the entire building full of, cow manure because you're shoveling cow manure.

[225] Yeah, yeah.

[226] And it's character building in all the ways the character building is like, oh, God, that was really painful.

[227] And so you do all that?

[228] And then also like blacksmithing and arts and crafts and other kinds of things.

[229] So to have a rounded human being.

[230] And it was a really kind of amazing experience across all this stuff.

[231] And I'd say two parts.

[232] One is I went, okay, I want to get independence.

[233] And the only reason I went to Stanford later was because I'd already gotten out of the house and gotten my sense of my own two feet.

[234] And then the other thing was the decisioning of, let's try things that I haven't been exposed to before that could be really, really interesting experiences.

[235] And so the reason why Putney over all the others was like, well, like, no, I thought I understood academics well enough at that point.

[236] Sure, sure.

[237] You realized you could always understand academics better.

[238] But it was like, ooh, these other things, that'd be really valuable to add into my life experience.

[239] And so that's why I went to Putney.

[240] Well, there's two things there.

[241] Like, one is it just already touched on the thing we just spoke of, which is, I think because you chose to go there, it sounds like you sought this place out, you can shovel the cow manure in a much different mind space than you could if your father is like, you're going to Putney.

[242] And that stupid little framing of the experience is everything for the experience.

[243] And then secondly, I can tell you're just a fucking major romantic, too.

[244] Like, I think I have a similar thing where it's just like, I want to know I sampled every flavor at Baskin Robbins before I commit to one, you know.

[245] Tau manure flavor?

[246] Yeah.

[247] Well, I get tasseled corn all summer through junior high, which is fucking dreadful.

[248] Also, close, one needs to throw away.

[249] By the way, you're reminding me of another funny thing.

[250] One of those Americans who is very happy to use my classless status in Europe as an American.

[251] And so I was at this excellent restaurant in Paris about 10 years ago called Gita Savas.

[252] and they roll up with the pre -desert cart.

[253] It's the tasting sampling.

[254] And they spend five minutes going, and then we have this magnificent thing and this magnificent thing and this amazing thing.

[255] And so I look at them and say, okay, well, how many do I get?

[256] Well, monsieur can have as many as he wants.

[257] And I said, okay, I'll have a little of everything, please.

[258] Yeah.

[259] They can look at me, and I'm like, hey, you said as many as I want, And you just spent five minutes describing how everything is completely amazing.

[260] Yeah.

[261] I'll try a little.

[262] I literally only want a taste of everything.

[263] And you don't know when you're going to be back.

[264] Yes.

[265] Because of a decade.

[266] Yes.

[267] But, okay, was your experience at that school, we're not going to spend the whole time continuing our debate.

[268] But I am curious.

[269] And I'm sure there's just something about me that I haven't fully identified yet, which is why I'm like skeptical of schools like that.

[270] But do you think there was like a group think happening there?

[271] Well, look, all boarding schools, it's a little bit less cult and a little bit more Lord of the Flies.

[272] All boarding schools have a little bit of the, you take a whole bunch of teenagers who think they've learned everything and know everything and are now defining their little Robinson Crusoe society on their own with limited adult supervision.

[273] And that's never really a recipe for awesome sauce in a society.

[274] And so there's that challenge to it.

[275] but it isn't really a cult, even though every Friday night we got together and sung as a school, right?

[276] Yeah.

[277] And my lesson there in the singing was the very first time I went there, I got nudged by one of the teachers standing behind me and said, look, if you don't know how to sing, don't do it as loudly.

[278] Right.

[279] Modulate the volume.

[280] And I'm like, oh, good point.

[281] You know, good general lesson.

[282] That's a good life lesson, yeah.

[283] Do you know what I think it really, okay, and this will be my last point on it, I swear to God, because your time is.

[284] valuable and you don't need to weigh in on this.

[285] But I must say, it's now occurring to me, as the great assimilator that you were, it actually is a group of people that are like, fuck everything normal.

[286] And that's just a frightening notion, maybe.

[287] Probably.

[288] Okay.

[289] We'll more on that.

[290] We'll think on that.

[291] Okay, then you get super traditional and you go to Stanford and you go to Oxford and you end up with a bunch of different jobs.

[292] You work in Napa, then you're at Apple for a minute.

[293] I guess I am curious.

[294] if there's anything neat, just because of the period of time you were at Apple was still, I guess it would have been just preceding the turnaround?

[295] It was pre -Job's return, and it was definitely the Dark Ages.

[296] Like, we had a CEO who was occasionally discovered hiding under his desk and, you know, had his assistant print out his email, you know, et cetera.

[297] So you're like, okay, I grew up being an Apple fanboy.

[298] My first serious computer was a Macintosh, et cetera.

[299] Well, on Apple 2E, I learned a program on.

[300] But when I had my own, it was a Macintosh.

[301] And it was like, really?

[302] This is how these places are run?

[303] I would compare that to when I finally got invited to the Playboy Mansion at like 30 years old.

[304] And I went with some folks.

[305] And I was like, here we are.

[306] This place I've dreamt of my whole childhood.

[307] I was like, man, this fucking phones are really old.

[308] Like, that's a really old phone system.

[309] Oh, only half the lights in this housework.

[310] Whatever.

[311] The whole thing was like, oh, wow, this isn't the Magic Kingdom.

[312] I thought it was going to be.

[313] People think that when they come in here.

[314] We get that a lot.

[315] Oh, this is a shithole.

[316] This is it?

[317] Yeah.

[318] This is where you guys do this.

[319] Okay, so one thing I'm excited by in your history and for people who aren't super well versed on you, the notion that you started social net, and I don't know, was it 97 or something?

[320] Yeah.

[321] It's so far before everything.

[322] I guess when does MySpace start?

[323] MySpace, I think, started in 2000.

[324] And then Friendster maybe was, what, 2001?

[325] Prince, 2002.

[326] So five years before Friendster, I guess I want to know your whole emotional attachment to that.

[327] Like, I guess from the outside, it would appear like, oh, yeah, you invented the iPhone in the 80s, but there are no cell towers.

[328] Like, oh, bummer, that could have been yours.

[329] Tell me about that, being that ahead of the curve on something like that.

[330] Well, by the way, this is a very common pattern in entrepreneurship generally because almost every big idea was tried a few times before, whether it was artificial intelligence, whether it was search engines, whether it was social networks, whether it was virtual reality and virtual worlds.

[331] It is actually, in fact, a general thing.

[332] For example, we have metaverse discussion now.

[333] You go all the way back to early 80s and you've got Neil Stevenson and Snow Crash, and even he was a particularly vibrant version of it.

[334] But there was a thoughts about that even before.

[335] So it's easy to go, wait a minute, I had that idea.

[336] I should have done it.

[337] And you have to actually have a certain equanimity to this, which is to say, you try to make your best judgment about time is now and how you do it and you learn and then be willing to do it again or willing to choose a new thing as the time is relevant.

[338] But I would say the arc through why I decided not to be an academic.

[339] I was studying philosophy at Oxford and said, no, I'm going to go be a software entrepreneur, which is one of the things that I had kind of learned.

[340] from a Stanford that was possible because it was a scale and who we are and how we find other people, how we communicate and collaborate and identify each other as individuals in a group and how we make ourselves better.

[341] And I'm going to go do that through software, this kind of network identity where your human nodes in a human network.

[342] In a landscape, kind of.

[343] Yes, was fundamental to kind of almost everything that I've done as an inventor, as an entrepreneur.

[344] The investing landscape has a broader landscape, but as an entrepreneur, that's the kind of thing I did.

[345] And so I had a whole bunch of ideas that I thought were really important.

[346] And so I said, okay, let me go start the company.

[347] And like I first did Apple Computer E -World because, again, the similar kind of place and online thing.

[348] I thought, oh, my God, the Internet's important.

[349] Went to Fujitsu, did this virtual world product called World's Way.

[350] It was like, no, no, no. Because, by the way, we're already living in the Metaverse.

[351] We're in the Metaverse right now in Zoom.

[352] We're in the Metaverse on Internet.

[353] Like, the metaverse is here.

[354] It's just the question of how it evolves.

[355] You're going to have to tell us what the Metaverse is, because in full disclosure is another thing I said in an interview a couple days ago is like, I've been sent four different links to read about Zuckerberg talking about the Metaverse, and I just can't, because it's coming out of his mouth, I can't do it.

[356] So I need your face to tell me what the Metaverse is before we continue.

[357] Well, I'm happy to do that.

[358] But the usual illusion, because usually what people think of as the Metaverse is kind of a complete simochrome of a world.

[359] It's like a Metaverse could be a replica of Mars or could be a replica of here, but you're walking around as avatars and as opposed to being a dashing man, you could be an elf or an octopus or whatever as part of doing this.

[360] And the full geek out version is you have a haptic body suit with a headset and so forth, you don't necessarily need that.

[361] The thing that's illusory in the discussion is we're already been doing metaverses.

[362] Even the invention of a phone system is the very beginning of a metaverse.

[363] It has a dresses.

[364] It has ways you interact with people.

[365] You identify them.

[366] You communicate with them.

[367] It's just a very limited bandwidth and a very, very isolated circumstance.

[368] So it's between that and, oh, my God, I can't distinguish between the metaverse and the real world.

[369] I'm going to even throw into what Yuval Harari said, which I thought was so breakthrough.

[370] He was asked, like, you know, in this world you proposed, where everyone's going to be virtually simulating all these experiences, you know, what's that going to do to people?

[371] He said, oh, make no mistake, we've been doing this for thousands of years.

[372] Religion is exactly that.

[373] It is a simulation.

[374] It is a game.

[375] It is a notion of doing right and getting to the next level and all.

[376] I just thought, oh, wow, that's so fascinating.

[377] So clearly we have some architecture and some hardwiring and some evolutionary processes that make us really set to enjoy this or to be drawn to it.

[378] And I also really quick, even when you laid out like that, it's like, oh, that's fucking D &D as well.

[379] It's like you've got four human beings that are joining each other in this place that only exists in your mind.

[380] Yes, exactly.

[381] And it's just the question of where you are on the spectrum of the technological sophistication of the environment that you're in.

[382] D &D tends to be a little hexagonal map and some lead figures and some pieces of paper and some dice and a bunch of inventive storytelling, most traditionally.

[383] But you can go all the way to World of Warcraft, in which case you're sitting there on your gaming rig going, take down the orc on the left, take down the ark on the left.

[384] Yeah.

[385] Okay, so then this metaverse that's now becoming colloquial, I guess, and through Zuckerberg's vision of it, is it you put on this suit, you put on this headset, and now you're in this social network, and I guess now you're interacting with physicality and the three -dimension?

[386] Okay.

[387] But does it seem insane?

[388] Like, we're just going to go full circle to like you're going to go to a cafe?

[389] Like, you're going to do exactly what it's existed forever.

[390] Are you going to?

[391] going to have sex, which you could already do.

[392] What's it going to give us that we couldn't do if we weren't maybe shy?

[393] Well, so I think there's a bunch of things.

[394] Look, I think we will have metaverse experiences, including ultimately kind of a version of which we have today, which is you going to outfit a room with cameras, put on a bunch of sensors and navigate.

[395] But like, for example, the kind of experience that I would look for myself doing this wouldn't be like a, oh, goody, I can walk down at the cafe in the Metaverse.

[396] Because it's like, I'd rather walk down the cafe here.

[397] By the way, I'd rather have a real cappuccino, you know, as part of it, not anything fake, or Matrix -like.

[398] But, for example, you say, well, I'd love to have flight as a superpower and fly around Mars and get to see Mars.

[399] That'd be really interesting.

[400] If you gave me a Mars Metaverse, and by the way, doing it with friends, like you can imagine a, hey, what's our evening dinner party?

[401] Well, our evening dinner party is first we're going to spend an hour.

[402] or two roaming around Mars, and then we're going to have dinner and talk about, like, what do we find interesting about Mars?

[403] Well, that would be fun, but I'd do that.

[404] But what happens when we have access to everything?

[405] Like, I don't know what that's going to do to us when it's like you don't even need curiosity anymore.

[406] Well, maybe this goes back to Dax's comment about I'm a romantic.

[407] I think curiosity will always be there.

[408] I think it's a super important thing about, like, what is being human?

[409] it's a journey of discovery, discovery of others, discovery of yourself, it's a journey of becoming.

[410] I have the hope and the confidence that that will persist in all these technological iterations.

[411] Like, part of what I think we're looking for is part of what we are as human beings is also we evolve through our technologies, right?

[412] Like imagine kind of who we are as people now versus like we could never have done this kind of thing even 50 years ago, this conversation we're having right now.

[413] Yeah.

[414] I just want to put a point on that.

[415] Yeah, we don't meet you ever.

[416] Yes.

[417] Like, us three human beings don't ever meet without this.

[418] Yes.

[419] Like, most likely.

[420] Yes, exactly.

[421] Now, we all bring our own baggage, right?

[422] So you think that, Monica, you think that, and I think all roads lead to fucking.

[423] I just really think that.

[424] Like, when you say the metaverse, like, you look at, you just look at the data from the internet and see where people spend time.

[425] And, man, fucking pornography is always tied with all the other major things.

[426] So I just think, like, doesn't it all just lead to fucking?

[427] So, Dax, I think that's because you're an early adopter.

[428] When you look at the early adoption of the technology, like in the very early part of the internet, it was something like 50 % of the bits and 20 % of the searches and a bunch of stuff.

[429] Now it's a tiny, tiny bit.

[430] Oh, it is?

[431] Yes.

[432] Right.

[433] It's because what happens is the people who are driven, like, oh, my God, early adopters tend to have that, you know, they kind of call the sex model of technology and tend to get driven that way for various reasons.

[434] But then now it's lots of video calls and watching movies and discovering information and Wikipedia has been constructed and that to the day.

[435] Navigating, yes.

[436] And so undoubtedly, many of the earliest, call it, virtual world metaversus experiences will be experimented with in the pornography realm.

[437] Well, I'm even thinking, like, I'm even getting more twisted.

[438] I'm like, took your example of like going exploring Mars with some friends.

[439] Well, if I'm exploring Mars with friends in our pod, it's like, well, this is a safe place for us to all, wife swap, because it's not real.

[440] You know what I'm saying?

[441] I think every social interaction is real, so I don't think.

[442] Well, good.

[443] That's a driving force I need to think about.

[444] They're there.

[445] It's not like they're made up.

[446] It's still everyone's there.

[447] No, like you're in your apartment.

[448] Rob's in his apartment.

[449] We're taking an armchair trip to Mars.

[450] I know, but it's still us.

[451] arriving at fake mars okay i'm going to get up the pervy stuff but i just had to i wouldn't be being true to myself if i didn't bring up that aspect by the way i just i just can't resist that puts a whole new color on the lazy boy but you know just for what it's worth oh believe me i will have the lazy boy version of the pod i sit in when the time comes um but your oxford philosophy i'm glad that's in your stew as someone who is actually one of the people with their hands on the levers, because I'm, I'm inclined to think you do think about this stuff in a fulfillment way and in a personal prosperity way more than maybe someone else could be driven.

[452] Do you have to call upon that frequently?

[453] I mean, you guys more than anybody have to truly think about the future of your products more than, I'm from Detroit, so I'm from the automotive industry.

[454] It's like, our big thought is like, is it ethical to make a car that goes over 220?

[455] Well, you can't really drive it anywhere.

[456] Let's fuck it.

[457] Let's do it.

[458] You know, That's about the end of that thought.

[459] By the way, even that thought is evolving because you get to autonomous vehicles.

[460] What is the ethics of sacrificing the person in the vehicle versus saving the school children who are crossing the road, etc., etc.?

[461] It's getting much more world complicated.

[462] So I find the philosophy stuff is pretty central to who I am.

[463] I mean, one thing we do is entrepreneurs and as investors is we're predictive anthropologists, e .g. markets going this way, technology going this way.

[464] humans will react the following way to these new things that are being constructed.

[465] And part of that is imagining the possible and then trying to shape it.

[466] And that kind of sense requires like a theory of human nature.

[467] And part of what I think philosophy along with psychology and other things is to have an active theory of human nature.

[468] And I think most entrepreneurs do, even if they say, well, people just want things that are cheaper or want things that are faster delivery and so forth.

[469] Those are relatively easy to understand theories of human nature, but I think all of these future products and services, all of them, go to, what do you think that means with a theory of human nature?

[470] And that's part of where philosophy becomes essential.

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

[472] What's up, guys?

[473] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[474] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[475] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[476] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[477] And I don't mean just friends.

[478] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[479] The list goes on.

[480] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[481] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[482] We've all been there.

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

[484] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

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[486] 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.

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

[488] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

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[493] This is such a rare opportunity.

[494] I have to ask this question that circulates in my brain all the time, and I feel like you'd be really equipped to answer it for me. So I am largely pro -technology for multiple reasons.

[495] One is I just think you're fooling yourself if you think you can stop it.

[496] So part of me is just kind of a realist position on it.

[497] And so then admitting defeat already, then, well, let's try to be a part of the conversation that makes it good.

[498] So I'm there.

[499] My one still reservation, and I think it's incredibly complicated, is I think we'd all feel safer if these companies were quicker to recognize when the outcome of the technology was completely unpredictable.

[500] We can't with all of our philosophers, our anthropologists and our psychologists, predict what incentivizing length of view is or learning that our identity is so much more fragile then we would have guessed.

[501] If you listen to the rabbit hole, New York Times podcast, it's so great.

[502] Like, a normal person can be incrementally driven somewhere insane.

[503] Now, I can accept all that fallout.

[504] I just need to feel safe that then YouTube's going to respond like this when they know it.

[505] And Facebook's going to respond like this.

[506] And now here comes second part, which is the economic aspect.

[507] I'm fearful that our current civil litigation setup paradigm is one that makes the penalty so large for admitting failure or mistake that that in fact is what's driving this huge delay and admitting that there was something wrong.

[508] I think like for Facebook to go, yeah, man, fuck, we didn't see that coming and now people are doing this.

[509] If they admit that now they're liable for all these people who ended up being all these different things.

[510] And so A, do you agree with that assessment and B, how do we solve that?

[511] I agree with both challenges.

[512] I do think it's one of the reasons why the companies tend to draw such a firm long within where they have legal protection, because once they go beyond that line of legal protection, it becomes a political question or a judgment of art or kind of the juries that say, oh, you got burned by a cup of coffee.

[513] Here's $600 million, et cetera, et cetera, kind of thing.

[514] And so I think that's one in order to navigate that.

[515] And then I think the other is also that all of these tech companies kind of started is these kind of folks who had some ideas in the garage and we're kind of building and they were kind of like, oh, we're going to create this new future.

[516] And they haven't really realized that once you get to a certain scale, you have the responsibility at kind of the size of society.

[517] And the first time I had this thought was at PayPal, because when we got to 100 million people, I was like, wow, with 100 million people, we have a certain number of embezzlers and thieves, we have a certain number of murderers.

[518] Well, 100 million people is a lot of people.

[519] There's a lot.

[520] Yeah, you have the general population at that point.

[521] Yes.

[522] And so, you have to then start comporting yourself in that way, which is one of the reasons why, of course, we have governments and police forces and other things.

[523] And obviously, we can define it in different ways and the scope is different.

[524] And the responsibilities of private companies is different.

[525] But you need to think about that is also what do you think of as society as your customer.

[526] And then to do that, you have to be in discussion.

[527] You have to be saying, hey, we do.

[528] Because like, for example, why do people feel less trust?

[529] You say, well, there's no issue here.

[530] It's like, well, no, we know there's an issue.

[531] We know there's an issue with misinformation.

[532] We know there's an issue around this whole vaccine craziness.

[533] We know there's issues here.

[534] And saying there's no issue, like, is trust destroying, right?

[535] So.

[536] But again, I'm a little sympathetic to these companies because I think it gets to a point where it's like they recognize if we acknowledge this, that we knew this 18 months ago and we didn't act fast enough, the fate of the company is now at risk.

[537] Like, it's the cigarette paradigm.

[538] It's like, if you acknowledge it, then the company's gone.

[539] So as soon as the options on the table for the company are disillusionment or complete bankruptcy versus uphold this lie, that's a pretty powerful incentive.

[540] For sure.

[541] Although, by the way, the tobacco company parallels are ones that I think are fall short on a couple of fronts.

[542] One tobacco, sure, it's fun.

[543] You get a little bit of a nicotine rush, but doesn't have significant upsides, which include, like, for example, staying connected with your family and friends and getting relevant information, all the stuff that exists through this.

[544] And then the second part of it is always when we're going through society, there's like bullying at school as well as cyberbullying.

[545] There's all these things that can lead to feelings of despair or other kinds of things and you have to be, you try to be careful about them, but they're not quite the same thing as lung cancer.

[546] Yeah, it's a very lazy parallel.

[547] I'm just, I'm trying to identify a situation where it is an existential issue for a company.

[548] Yes.

[549] No, and that I agree with.

[550] The thing is, is that if you say you're in a situation where if you acknowledge that there have been issues here, you have potentially uncapped liability and uncapped beatings, well, everyone rational will say, no problem.

[551] There are no problems.

[552] Yes.

[553] That's my concern, is that that is the catch -22 that these companies are often in.

[554] Yes.

[555] And I think that's a wise thing that's not often recognized.

[556] I want to.

[557] along with, of course, the fact that part of the question about frequently what's going on the press and frequently what's going on in politics is grandstanding.

[558] Let's take a specific issue, which is what we should be doing with these companies is antitrust.

[559] And you're like, oh, so you think you'd have better information flow if you had 10 Facebooks versus one.

[560] Right.

[561] Right.

[562] Right.

[563] Right.

[564] Right.

[565] Right.

[566] Right.

[567] Right.

[568] Right.

[569] Right.

[570] Right.

[571] Right.

[572] Like, it just literally doesn't make sense.

[573] And across the whole, the whole iteration.

[574] like all of them in terms of what kinds of things are.

[575] We have this issue.

[576] So therefore antitrust.

[577] Well, that issue is not solved with antitrust, right?

[578] It may be an important issue to solve.

[579] There may be ways that government needs to get involved in it, although getting involved in an intelligent way that doesn't enshrine the past against the future.

[580] Like, let's prevent the future.

[581] Like, that's a bad idea.

[582] Let's make a good future.

[583] That's a good idea.

[584] Yeah.

[585] I think we're just now realizing, like, the power, which is embarrassing.

[586] that it's taken the song, where we are just now realizing the power that technology has.

[587] And now I feel like it's incumbent on us to, like, put ethics committees in all these companies and things like that.

[588] So as opposed to the main focus being, let's make product or let's all meet in Mars, there's somebody there who's saying, and it might cause this or might do this, like, we have to have that, I think.

[589] Yeah, I agree.

[590] And by the way, I think because we're in a very high arc of public criticism of Facebook, people are neglecting, they're saying, well, actually, in fact, they have, they've hired a bunch of people who are studying it and who are able to ask challenging questions.

[591] And that's a good thing.

[592] Now, we would like them also to then say, okay, when you found the challenges, what are you doing about it?

[593] See, yeah, I have so much sympathy for, like, you can have 80 anthro professors in these meetings.

[594] They're unknowable because we are in completely uncharted water.

[595] There's so many counterintuitive outcomes for this stuff.

[596] We can actually look at a billion people's behavior in a click of a, you know, I don't believe we'll be able to predict with any, I don't, I'm not very confident.

[597] This is all trial and error.

[598] You can't model it out.

[599] So what I would feel safer with is that we have a really rigorous transparency and a rigorous response time to when we find out this thing's going sideways.

[600] We need to redirect.

[601] And I'd like to depenalize that behavior in some fashion.

[602] I don't know how you do it, but I feel like we're in a math equation that's never going to spit out the answer we want if these are all the incentives.

[603] Well, this is one of the things I suggested when I was talking to some of the folks in the Obama administration about this, which is, well, look, you set up a. agency, but as opposed to a regulatory agency of saying, thou shalt not X, and thou shalt, it's like, look, if you guys tell us what problems you're struggling with and kind of what your progress is and tell us how you're investing in it, we will give you safe harbor on the things you tell us about.

[604] Now, we may go, whoa, that's a big one.

[605] You need to really be working on that really hard right now.

[606] But it's for having the discussion.

[607] Right.

[608] Reid, I like you.

[609] Sometimes when I talk to folks that have made it big in the tech business, I have an unfair expectation that maybe they won't be as demonstrative, expressive.

[610] This is great.

[611] I like you, and I'm sad that we didn't chat before you heard me rail about Afghanistan, which I have no business doing.

[612] It was fun.

[613] I'm going to vent my thing.

[614] This notion that we do anything, Afghanistan, for the women of Afghanistan, I just find kind of a repugnant thing to lean on, considering the Russians had them all in school when we overthrew them.

[615] I don't know.

[616] I just, I think it's a, you know, it's cheap.

[617] It's fucking cheap.

[618] Although, the one thing I would say is it is a true North that we should stay committed.

[619] The women of Afghanistan are the biggest losers in this whole thing, and we should stay committed to trying to do something right by them.

[620] Thousand percent.

[621] I just have a hard time hearing a general tell me that's why they want.

[622] I'm just like, that's why we're invaded.

[623] Okay, I listened to your podcast because your book is Masters of Scale, surprising truths from the world's most successful entrepreneurs.

[624] It's based off of your podcast, which is Masters of Scale.

[625] And I listened to Ray Dalio this morning, which was a fantastic episode and someone we keep, Eric keeps begging us to have on, who we'd love to have on, that's neither here nor there.

[626] I would love for you to first explain scale because that in itself is an interesting concept.

[627] I don't know if everyone's aware of.

[628] So at least the way I define scale, which is kind of the impact you have in the life, is the number of people you impact times the depth of impact you have on them times persistent over time.

[629] So it's a cross product of X times Y, times Z. And obviously the details in each of these is like, well, what does deep mean?

[630] Does deep mean you're having a lot of fun?

[631] Does deep mean that you've changed your mind on something?

[632] Does deep mean that you've got new economic opportunities?

[633] The number of people, obviously some people you might impact deeply, some lightly, so there's kind of a scope there.

[634] But time is kind of, does it have a persistent effect in your life?

[635] Does it define some important element of the world that you're navigating?

[636] That's how I think of scale.

[637] And I think of when we're building products or services or companies or institutions.

[638] Those are the ones when I say scale, what I mean.

[639] Okay.

[640] And would I be wrong, though, to say even like more basic than that, John D. Rockefeller was sending one train car of oil on five different routes that were running to where he needed.

[641] And he said, hey, gang, if you dedicate one full route to me, I'll load up every train car with it.

[642] Your cost will go down by half.

[643] And mine will go down by half.

[644] That's also a definition of scale, right?

[645] Well, it's scale when like one train car of fuel, not so much scale.

[646] Right.

[647] And this is over time.

[648] train cars every day for the next year where that oil is the thing that powers the entire town and everything else, then you begin to get into scale.

[649] Right, right, right, right.

[650] Or we have a diaper company.

[651] And the example I always give is like, if we can walk into Walmart and start at 7 ,000 stores, we can start with the price being half of what our competitors are.

[652] So that's just, that's an economy of scale or a benefit of scale in that situation.

[653] But it's because it's 17 ,000 stores, which meets X hundreds of thousands.

[654] of people, except, etc. Yeah.

[655] Just as a fellow nerd, I'm embarrassed.

[656] I've forgotten his name, but I don't know if you ever listened to Sam Harris's podcast.

[657] Of course.

[658] He had this, okay, so he had a guy on that talked about scale in this mind -blowing way.

[659] It was about that every single thing scales up, up into the universe.

[660] Is Jeffrey West?

[661] That sounds right.

[662] Yeah, he's a Santa Fe Institute guy, I think.

[663] Yeah, comparing like the way a body, human body is mapped out that if you look at the structure and design of the human body, it almost perfectly maps onto what a city has.

[664] And even the city has that same fractal quality that the county will have in the state and so on.

[665] I don't know that I've ever had my mind blown so much on an episode other than that one.

[666] So there's an Eames film that also does this that goes from Cell all the way up to the galaxy.

[667] Oh, really?

[668] Yeah.

[669] And that's kind of different levels of the camera and lens, given that you're a kind of a visual story guy as well, might be worth looking at.

[670] Oh, I would love that.

[671] Yeah, because then you start, for me, who's an atheist, I start getting suspicious about everything.

[672] Like, how could this form kind of be consistent through everything we see?

[673] Yep.

[674] Is a head scratcher.

[675] Well, we do live in a mathematical universe, if nothing else.

[676] Right.

[677] Right.

[678] Okay, so when you were deciding, you've done 100 episodes of the podcast?

[679] That's right.

[680] And do you have favorites?

[681] You must have favorites.

[682] Well, actually, in general, I am not great with the favorites question, not only when you try to ask which of your children are the most pretty or wonderful, which is the usual question.

[683] I tend to have a favorite for X. It's a little bit like you say, do you have mentors?

[684] Like, yes, I have a Neil Bustry who's a mentor in Enterprise.

[685] I have Jeffrey Wiener, who's a mentor in scale organizations.

[686] I have David Zee, who's a mentor in consumer internet investing.

[687] da -da -da -da -da as a kind of a way of doing this.

[688] Similarly, if you asked me kind of like different vectors, like you could say, well, which conversation most surprised you?

[689] Oh, this one.

[690] Which one did you learn something from that you thought you knew the opposite of?

[691] Oh, this one.

[692] Yeah.

[693] Okay, so let me get more specific.

[694] So when people ask me that, a dog the bounty hunter is always top on my list just because of the counterintuitiveness of his real character.

[695] I found to be like such a real -time revelation and such a beautiful dude, I just, I love it.

[696] So who shocked you with maybe their emotional intelligence?

[697] Because you're going after people that that's not what they're primarily known for.

[698] So, like, who is a human just shot out at you?

[699] It's like, oh, they've got something.

[700] Emotional intelligence, and we are very selective of the, because, like, it's only people I want to spend time talking to.

[701] Yeah.

[702] I'd say probably one of the surprises there was Tyra Banks.

[703] Okay.

[704] who brought a kind of a very, like, you know, and this may be the classic, explode your stereotype, you know, here's amazing, supermodel, supermodel, et cetera, et cetera.

[705] And is actually, in fact, really pragmatic down earth kind of try and understand things and approach supermodeling the way an entrepreneur would, which is to say, okay, how do you get product market fit?

[706] What are the things I do in order to do that, you know, versus the, oh, it's because I'm beautiful.

[707] Right, right, right, right.

[708] So that was definitely one that was kind of.

[709] kind of a surprise.

[710] And there's also because first time I ever talked to her was on the show.

[711] Yeah, right.

[712] And how about someone who changed your mind radically, which is, I imagine, a rare experience?

[713] Well, one of the funny things was the interview I did was Zuckerberg, which is a number of years ago.

[714] And you should say you're one of the original investors of Facebook.

[715] Yes.

[716] Yeah, I was in the first money in, Peter, Thiel, Mark Pinkus, and I. And so people like to characterize the move fast and break things as a principle of that's how destructive he is.

[717] And actually, in fact, which is a classic kind of rhetorical device, which was actually, in fact, speed really matters.

[718] And it's okay if you're breaking things internally to the company, way systems work, et cetera, et cetera, in order to really deliver a product fast and learn very fast.

[719] And by the way, speed is essential to consumer internet and general startups.

[720] And so it's a great way of articulating that principle.

[721] And then someone's talking about, oh, they've changed that principle.

[722] Now it's move fast with stable infrastructure.

[723] And I internalized what the person had told me, which is they've grown up.

[724] They've now gotten out of their teenage years and they're now adults.

[725] And I was like, so I figured, oh, I'd ask Zuckerberg what that growing experience is like.

[726] And he looked at me puzzled.

[727] He said, no, it's the same principle.

[728] It's the net, how fast are you moving, how fast are you evolving your product.

[729] In the early days of a startup, the basic way to know that you're moving fast enough if some things break.

[730] In later stage, when you're very large and have a whole bunch of customers and systems that depend on you, when you break, you break hard.

[731] So you must keep your infrastructure stable.

[732] So it's keep moving really fast, but don't break your infrastructure.

[733] Yeah, the principle still move as fast as you can, basically.

[734] Right.

[735] And that was like the, oh, right.

[736] That's still correct.

[737] And this kind of listening to these other parrots going, we knew it was better.

[738] I was like, okay, note to self, don't listen, understand what the first principles are, understand what the game you're in is, understand what the nature of competition is, the nature of what your product cycle is, and do that.

[739] And that was kind of where I thought I knew something, and it was like, oops, nope, this is right.

[740] Well, I was even shocked to see when I was reading about you that, yes, growth, that speed is the variable that you think most needs to be nurtured.

[741] And I guess, because we started this diaper thing three years ago, and we've been growing fast, and I guess I've probably been so much, been like, well, hold on, slow down.

[742] Let's make sure everything we're doing.

[743] So I guess for me, that was a little counterintuitive.

[744] So tell me what the cost and the benefit of that, of speed is.

[745] So blitzscaling, which is my third book, the one before Master Scale, is the precise definition as prioritizing speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty.

[746] And you'd say, well, that's kind of crazy.

[747] Listen to that.

[748] Wow.

[749] That's so the opposite of how I operate.

[750] Wow.

[751] And look, the reason is is sometimes because we live in and here I'm borrowing from your guys' world, Glenn Gary, Glen Ross Markets, right, which is first prize Cadillac, second prize steak knives, third prize you're fired.

[752] Also, ABC always be closing and ABR is our saying, so please continue.

[753] We're embroiled in it, yeah.

[754] Yes, exactly.

[755] And so what that means then is the first.

[756] first mover to scale is the company, the product that gets the Cadillac.

[757] And so, whether it's PayPal, whether it's Uber, whether it's Airbnb, whether it's Google, whether it's, et cetera, et cetera, Facebook, LinkedIn, that's the game.

[758] And that's part of the reason why, because like you say, well, what is it that Silicon Valley knows because half of the NASDAQ is within 30 miles of Palo Alto, like Silicon Valley is three and a half million people.

[759] That's everybody.

[760] That's not people in tech industry.

[761] That's everybody who lives there.

[762] The tech industry has a tiny fraction of that.

[763] Why is it the half of the NASDA comes out of that?

[764] And that's because the understanding that actually, in fact, the tech companies of the future are built by moving very fast.

[765] Because not only do we have local, like intense civil convoy competitionals, now there's global competition and Chinese competition and all over else, and so you have to be able to do that.

[766] And it's kind of the question of how do you do it.

[767] Now, by the way, speed is relative to competition.

[768] So you say, well, I'm creating a new hardware gadget phone.

[769] Well, yeah.

[770] Yeah, make sure the things you're shipping work, because if you don't, if you ship something that's broken, you're dead.

[771] Right.

[772] Yeah, you only get one shot at that.

[773] Yes, right.

[774] So you have to be thinking about faster than competition, but still within the zone of what your product is.

[775] Now, a consumer internet product, hey, take the, you know, move fast and break things.

[776] In the very early days in 2004, 2005, the Facebook went down for a couple hours.

[777] Eh, not a very big deal.

[778] Right.

[779] You people are a little grumpy, right?

[780] It's like, okay, fix it.

[781] Move on.

[782] Keep moving.

[783] But now Instagram had a bomb.

[784] Oh, my God, for like an hour and everyone panicked.

[785] People jumped out of windows, I think.

[786] Exactly.

[787] So move fast with stable infrastructure.

[788] I asked who your favorites are because obviously you have to pare down what is 100 great conversations into something that'll be a book.

[789] So you're definitely parsing out things you loved.

[790] And I wondered, what was that selection process like?

[791] How did you decide that?

[792] Well, it was a combination of a few things.

[793] So part of the reason to do a book is because some people learn better through books than audio, audio for other people.

[794] Groups generally learn better through books.

[795] So if you wanted to have three or four people or a company or a team talking about something.

[796] So we kind of parsed it into a set of kind of what we thought were really important and key enduring lessons, like the fact that an entrepreneurship you encounter a lot of adversity and a lot of nose, how do you adjust them?

[797] What are ways you can bring in your social mission.

[798] What are the ways that you must always keep a learning mindset?

[799] And then we said, okay, so these are the kind of key themes that we need to make sure are there in the written format and the kind of engagement.

[800] Now, let's look at the set of conversations and say which people kind of best added insight, color, emotional presence and connectivity, the tool set for doing it.

[801] And then let's add them in, for example, one of the, it was very funny because June Cohen and I, she's the CEO and the executive producer had made the decision that we're going to be 50 -50 gender balanced at the very beginning because we knew that were all these great entrepreneurial women's stories that just weren't being told.

[802] And we only made it public because it was something like Women's Awareness Week or some conference or something said, oh, we'd love you to come on.

[803] We're like, oh, I guess we should say this rather than just do it.

[804] And do it, and do it, of course.

[805] And so we wanted to make sure that there's also the right kind of spread of voices because there are people who are amazing and all these different reigns.

[806] And so people can say, ah, I see it here.

[807] When you make that pledge, do you then find out it's a little harder to keep than I was guessing?

[808] 100%.

[809] Yeah.

[810] There are women that I know who have awesome stories that I have been asking for years.

[811] Yeah.

[812] I do think part of this is because I've said it before, but I think part of it is with minority guests and female guests, if they are Mindy or of of a level that you're asking, that we're asking, they might not have two hours in their day to do it because there aren't enough opportunities.

[813] So those people are busy.

[814] They're in all the movies.

[815] They're, you know, like.

[816] Yeah, that's one of Monica's explanation.

[817] Like someone like Kevin Hart, like he's doing every single aspect of the business.

[818] And really a fucking podcast is a low priority.

[819] I get it.

[820] Because they're not represented the way they should be in film.

[821] So they're like, okay, we have five black guys we go to, Kevin Hart, Will Smith, this, this.

[822] And so they're doing everything.

[823] Yeah.

[824] Look, and I think that I've thought about that too.

[825] Part of the pitch that I make, because obviously part of what we do on Masters of Scale is say, here are exemplars of scale of scale leaders, scale entrepreneurs, scale executives.

[826] And those folks are folks that we should all learn from.

[827] And it's an important leadership role to go do that.

[828] Now, that being said, like I'm aware of one of the problems, like I have a couple of my friends who are leaders within the minority world.

[829] And I say, look, I know you get asked to do this stuff all the time to do these things.

[830] And so, and I know I can't help you by being a voice of the people of color community, right?

[831] I just, I can't help you with that.

[832] So let me help you in other ways to free up the time because we need you in society helping with this.

[833] So let me help on other ways to give you more time and ability to do that.

[834] Because I recognize that it falls, unfortunately, as a disproportionate burden.

[835] So let me help on these other things to try to help with that because as a healthy society, as the society that we want to be in, we do need your voice.

[836] Yeah.

[837] And by the way, as we're talking about, it's like, I'm not factoring in that women generally are going to have far more responsibilities child care -wise.

[838] So that's like another thing that's going to be on their plate that's not on a lot of our male guests.

[839] Yeah.

[840] Sadly, society is changing in that way, but we'll see.

[841] I think so, slowly.

[842] But, yeah, there was a meme that went around that was like, my husband as a working dad is something that I've never said, that no one's ever said.

[843] And it's true.

[844] That's true.

[845] I've never been described as a working dad.

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

[847] I really like the Ray Dalio conversation.

[848] And I saw in you some poise.

[849] that I admire.

[850] So first things about that interview, which I enjoyed is it's talking about the value of like Socratic discourse in any kind of group dynamic and how people should encourage yet set guardrails up for a healthy, lively debate.

[851] And the example you set up the episode with is like Ray Dalio bet everything at one time in his career on something that didn't pan out.

[852] And in his conclusion was I didn't have really anyone in my life challenging how I thought about things.

[853] And I think a lot of entrepreneurs must suffer from that because it generally starts as a one -person show.

[854] And your job is to kind of be a romantic and sell people on this idea you have.

[855] And so the thing that's your best arrow in the quiver is also can be your downfall.

[856] So it's like, yeah, how do you advise people to keep that, to barricade that and also be completely open to criticism?

[857] Because I suffer from this.

[858] So, look, it's hard.

[859] One of the reasons why the first chapter in the book is learn from knows.

[860] But what I do and what I recommend people do is you pitch the full idea.

[861] You pitch the, here's why I think this idea is really interesting.

[862] This is why I think the market's interesting.

[863] This is why I think the time is now.

[864] This is why I think I could pull it off.

[865] Really quick.

[866] This is why people are going to let strangers stay in their house.

[867] Yes, for example.

[868] Let's start there.

[869] Yes, exactly.

[870] Renting a room, renting a couch, renting an apartment, and thinking it's a great thing, not a Friday.

[871] One's nightmare.

[872] Part seven.

[873] You are getting in the car with strangers.

[874] It's like the first thing you're taught is a five -wheel not to do and now we're all doing it.

[875] Great point, Monica.

[876] Exactly.

[877] And so you pitch it and then you say what's wrong with the idea.

[878] Not what do you think of it, but what's wrong with it?

[879] Because if you say, what do you think of the idea, people talking to you say, oh, you must want to encourage me. Oh, it's great.

[880] You know, good luck.

[881] You know, blah, blah, thinking, oh, no chance.

[882] Yeah.

[883] And so you go, what's wrong?

[884] And they say, okay, well, I think a stranger's not get in the car.

[885] And you say, well, and this is part of, like, the really best investing, which includes entrepreneurship, is to be contrarian and right.

[886] So you go, okay, smart people have a good thought.

[887] The good thought is the stranger's not going to get in the car.

[888] The stranger's not going to rent a room or an apartment or let a room or apartment.

[889] What is your theory about why these smart people's criticism is wrong?

[890] And what is the thing you're going to do or want to navigate it?

[891] Because, by the way, if you happen to be right, then it will be huge, right because in the Airbnb case that this gets to the fact that it's like kind of completely redefines kind of travel experience how you connect the communities what the availability space looks like in various ways and how you do it people who are doing it as hosts obviously go this is a key additional income i also get to meet some interesting people depending on how i'm doing it travelers go oh this is actually a much more interesting experience much more relevant connected to the community, price differently, et cetera, as ways of doing it.

[892] And that's like, ooh.

[893] And then, of course, as it gets to scale, to our earlier discussion of scale, then they can begin to build in the things to make it as safe as a hotel or safer than a hotel.

[894] Similar with the ride sharing is to say, okay, well, okay, I'm going to get in a stranger's car.

[895] Then all of a sudden, I now have a complete availability of a transport grid.

[896] I don't need to have two cars.

[897] Maybe I only need to have one.

[898] Like I go, ooh, I was over at my friends and I was drinking way too much, right?

[899] And now I can actually get a place where I could get back and do it safely for everyone, including me. And obviously, as again, as it gets to scale, they can answer the safety questions and the kind of validation questions.

[900] And if anything, because of the evolution of the ecosystem and the technology, make it even safer than the previous taxi system.

[901] I met some guy in Utah recently who runs software for large apartment owners.

[902] And I said, like, what is the future of this other than just managing people submitting to rent a place?

[903] And dude, what Airbnb has now on the verge of scaling to, which you would already know, but I didn't know, is like, people are going to own apartments in this fashion.

[904] They're going to own a set of properties and they're going to move freely as they want to.

[905] And I was like, now, that's the next step that seemed inconceivable to me. Yep, exactly.

[906] And then obviously you can make it work economically because of Airbnb.

[907] Yeah.

[908] Oh, my God.

[909] It's so it really is fascinating.

[910] It is fascinating.

[911] Because it is what you said earlier, speed over other stuff because I would think you would have to make it safe first or no one would sign up.

[912] But you're saying the opposite.

[913] And that is what happened.

[914] Yeah, I'm trying to think like, no, now you have to check the tag.

[915] They have to say your name.

[916] All that stuff's newer.

[917] Yes, right, because you iterate towards it.

[918] Now, it wasn't that it was completely unsafe in the beginning.

[919] Because, by the way, frequently in the very earliest things, the early adopters are just kind of like people in a rural community.

[920] They're like, hey, we're just human beings making this work.

[921] It's when you get to the 100 million level where you begin to get the criminals and other people.

[922] And that's when you need to begin to get the scale systems and governances and protections in it as you're scaling up.

[923] And, you know, like early adopters tend to be a little bit more adventurous.

[924] I'm more willing of, oops, the room wasn't available.

[925] What do I do, et cetera, et cetera, and then you have to build in the systems as you get to scale on that.

[926] And that's the pattern by which these companies got built.

[927] Because if you, for example, you're saying Airbnb, what I'm first going to do is spend a year working on my identity verification system, not going to work as a company.

[928] Yeah.

[929] Yeah.

[930] Wow.

[931] So I would imagine, just to project onto you, I've been writing and selling screenplays long enough that when I, I sit with somebody who's on the same endeavor, it's now my blueprint, right?

[932] I can just see, well, you know, you kind of tied up all your emotional issues at the end of the second act, so there's really no reason for us to watch the third act.

[933] Like, it's just very laser clear to me, and I have to imagine as an investor in someone who's in these companies really early, it must be very clear to you.

[934] Are you able to just go like, yeah, that's great.

[935] You pointed that out, but you guys have really, you know, you're going to have a problem here.

[936] Does that become easier and easier for you to see?

[937] It does become easier, but not perfect.

[938] Because, again, being contrarian and right is to say, like, okay, this could be really bold and big and different, but is the time now, do these people have the right plan or the right people to kind of get there?

[939] Now, in the case of Airbnb, that was one of the ones where two minutes into the presentation, I said, okay, I'm going to make you an offer to invest.

[940] Let's just make this a working session, right?

[941] Like, I already, I've already done reference checks on the three founders because I happen to have done it beforehand.

[942] And, like, you guys have already, like, clearly demonstrated this interesting.

[943] Let's just make it a working session.

[944] You get to know me, too.

[945] Yeah.

[946] There's others where it's like, well, let's talk about this some more.

[947] And some of those end up being really strong successes, like Convoy, which is, you know, essentially in parlance, Uber for trucking.

[948] It was like, well, is there really a different space that would really be a different technological base, a different definition of the kind of the human network that's in it?

[949] It was like, yes, and then this is the right one amongst all the startups.

[950] And then there's others that are kind of more challenging where you thought, ooh, a social network for the high school would work.

[951] Well, at least that one didn't.

[952] Yeah.

[953] I mean, immediately I go, well, you need to resell your client base every three years.

[954] That's scary.

[955] Yes, although if it's oriented around the school and it's kind of almost like the school infrastructure, then the new folks will naturally join.

[956] So you wouldn't necessarily have to have a sales effort to do that.

[957] The question had occurred to me. of that one.

[958] The principal problem is it's very hard to do new products in the education space because there's so many antibodies to it must stay the same way that it was running in the 60s.

[959] Yeah.

[960] Yeah.

[961] Yeah.

[962] I often marvel at the tech space, I guess particularly when I think of Bill Gates, because I think you're not on like a movie studio and that like you're mashing up really dramatically different skill sets.

[963] Like a creative writer isn't an accountant.

[964] isn't a transportation department for a film.

[965] Similarly, like, I think, like, Bill Gates is a unique thing as, like, the fact that he could comprehend all these facets of this enormously quickly growing business, like not just the software, not just the story, not the movie, but the marketplace in the delivery and all these things.

[966] I would imagine you are very much a producer in that respect, where you're dealing with very creative people or maybe even very technological savvy people.

[967] You also need salespeople.

[968] And, like, you're really pulling from all these things.

[969] It dovetails into what you were talking about with Ray Dalio, which is, like, getting experts from all these different fields as being a part of this think tank that can bring all these things.

[970] So how do you go about assembling that?

[971] And you yourself have to have this really comprehensive notion of what a tech company is, yeah?

[972] 100%.

[973] It's one of the reasons why, like, when say, well, what are essential features to founders?

[974] It's that you're an infinite learner.

[975] You're learning in all these different range.

[976] arenas, you're learning different scale of management, different kinds of problems, different go -to -markets, you're assembling, you're recruiting, you know, always be recruiting, you're assembling a group of people around you who themselves need to be learners, because you can't necessarily hire people who go, I know 100 % absolutely how to do this, but like what does that kind of pattern look like and how does that kind of operate?

[977] Not only is the network of people you're assembling the employees, but also investors and advisors and board members and partners and et cetera, et cetera.

[978] And you have to be getting all of these networks to collaborate, to play on the relevant teams together.

[979] And that's part of the reason why the entrepreneurial journey and generally, but especially the technological entrepreneurial journey, is in fact super hard and most companies don't succeed.

[980] Yeah.

[981] Okay.

[982] So when starting a podcast like this is your first thought, like, well, who the fuck's going to listen to this?

[983] So how many tech entrepreneurs out there?

[984] I got a lot out of it, not having that as a pursuit.

[985] So how does your scale backwards, I guess?

[986] What themes are they taken out of this specific endeavor that are applicable to their normal lives?

[987] Well, part of what's generally happening is we get to a larger world, seven billion people, more global world, interconnected in various ways, is that there's more things of scale.

[988] And actually, we also have what John Seeley Brown and John Hagel called the topple rate, is companies that used to be the really big companies in the S &B 500 topple out of it, and that's an increasing percentage.

[989] So the revolution of which are the companies that are essentially the largest.

[990] And as such, whether you're in a corporation, whether you're doing a startup, whether you're an institution that's around these kind of organizations that are scaling, whether you're responding to a pandemic and like the coronavirus, which is another example of blitzscaling in a different vector, this kind of notion about kind of how do you get to scale and what are the techniques are doing it and what are the things that can because there's so many ways to fail getting the scale what are some of the possible tools possible successes and what is the kind of things that give you the emotional and psychological fortitude for these very difficult journeys you know these climbing mount everest kinds of journeys and that's what we kind of think the audience is and you know i didn't know if it was going to be mostly specialist kind of high -scale tech entrepreneurs, or if it would be the broader world, which is what we seem to be reaching.

[991] You seem to have government people listening to us.

[992] We seem to have relatively wide variety of people listening to us.

[993] Hopefully, it's helpful.

[994] I do podcasting as part of my, how do I help the world?

[995] It's not my business.

[996] We almost have absolute opposite approaches to this, because we are starting with the most broadly appealing thing in the world, celebrities, on a Monday.

[997] And then we're trying to get you esoteric on Thursday.

[998] So it's like you went the opposite direction.

[999] Somehow both are yielding results.

[1000] I presume I'm the esoteric on Thursday.

[1001] Absolutely.

[1002] Can we give people enough candy on Monday that they'll stick with us on Thursday?

[1003] Yep.

[1004] So back to you trying to help.

[1005] One of the things that came out in that episode as well is that we might have a fundamentally flawed approach to learning.

[1006] This really piqued my interest in that.

[1007] And I don't know if there's U .R .A. that pointed this out.

[1008] But the educational system, to begin with, covets being right, it rewards being right.

[1009] It incentivizes it in a way that is probably counterproductive to minimally like the Socratic approach or trying to not be right as much as starting a great conversation that through this group dialect will become something great.

[1010] Could you expound on that and tell me like, that's what I want you to fix?

[1011] Can you fucking fix my kids' schools so that they're not shot into the same paradigm?

[1012] Unfortunately, I think that may be a challenge too big for me. But look, I do think it's enormously important that people learn to try, to experiment, to have aspirations that are high enough that they will try some things they fail at, learn from those failures and recoveries because you're going to be much more successful, much more resilient, it, ultimately much happier doing it.

[1013] Because we tend to tell a little bit of this is the problem of these narrative stories, which is the heroic journey where the underdog came from nowhere and did all these amazing things and never failed and was now lauded by the world.

[1014] It's like, well, I never worked on.

[1015] Howard Rourke.

[1016] Howard Rourke.

[1017] He was always right and everyone was always wrong ultimately.

[1018] Yes, exactly.

[1019] And everyone shrugged.

[1020] Yes, yes.

[1021] And so I think that that the notion is to say, look, if you're not trying enough things and playing hard enough that you don't fail sometimes, you're not really setting your goals high enough.

[1022] You're not really playing as ambitiously and aggressive.

[1023] But look, you ultimately want to have successes.

[1024] You ultimately want to have amazing things.

[1025] But failure is just like, no, it's things you learn from, things you grow upon.

[1026] And the narrative arc is not succeed, succeed, succeed.

[1027] You ask me about social net.

[1028] And the answer is, well, social not was a failure.

[1029] Like, there were all kinds of things I didn't know.

[1030] It was my first entrepreneurial experience.

[1031] I tell people that.

[1032] That doesn't mean I didn't stop there.

[1033] I went off and did PayPal and then I did LinkedIn.

[1034] And I was like using all of that as learning and going and pursuing what you're doing as part of making this work.

[1035] And so I think as a system we need to realize that, as individuals, as teachers, as mentors, as parents, as students, as learners, etc that actually in fact go and try have a bias to action a bias to testing and making this happen and then use the learnings to amplify to accelerate to become wiser more compassionate more capable yeah and i'm hesitant to give advice but one thing i do try to tell young writers is like and i had to learn this the hard way which is you sell a project the studio system is such that they buy a thousand projects and they make 13 movies a year.

[1036] And there are the stories of people who stick with some script and they fight for it for 12 years and it gets made, but those are definitely the anomalies.

[1037] So my kind of thought to writers is one I had to give myself, which is, do I think I am full of infinite great ideas or do I think that was my only good idea?

[1038] Because if it's my only good idea, yeah, I should fight for it for the rest of my life.

[1039] But if I think I'm a well of great ideas, just keep moving, keep building, keep.

[1040] And it sounds like you have a similar bit of advice.

[1041] Yes, very much.

[1042] And part of to know when to pivot, there's a whole bunch of interesting kind of schools and tools and terminology.

[1043] And like we have this episode was Stuart Butterfield on how to pivot.

[1044] And as you have a theory of your game.

[1045] And if your theory of your game, your new ideas are worse than your old ideas as you're trying to pivot to learn, then it's time to really pivot and do a major thing to something new.

[1046] It's like, look, I tried to tool up the script some.

[1047] I try this.

[1048] I try that.

[1049] My new mixed ideas are not as good as my old idea is time to do a new script yeah okay so the thing i admired about you in that conversation with ray was you do a lightning round at the end which is fun but he very much wanted to have a protracted debate about AI and the future of AI and comically it's coming at the end of a conversation that's like let's have some discourse and yet you somehow you had the global site to not get, again, and this is, I'm not throwing shade on Ray.

[1050] It's just you had the fortitude to resist the ensnarement that I could have never resisted.

[1051] And I think you've thought more about the future of AI than probably Ray had.

[1052] So you had to have been tempted.

[1053] And I guess I have to imagine that's a product of you having developed all these different ideas and companies.

[1054] You must have a strategy in that situation that you're using.

[1055] That's not easy, in my opinion.

[1056] I guess what is is everything I'm doing, I kind of have the theory of the game of what I'm doing.

[1057] And so, for example, in that episode with Ray, which is this really important things around dialogue, around principles, around seeking your ideas to be challenged and so forth, getting the magic and the important tool set of that out was the really important thing.

[1058] It was like, look, we could later have the debate on AI one way or the other, and I'd be happy, like, Ray's awesome.

[1059] I'd be happy to do that with him in some context.

[1060] But it was like, well, not here.

[1061] Like, yeah.

[1062] And the pass this way to do that as opposed to saying, like, one of my favorite Monty Python sketches is the argument sketch, as opposed to saying, no, we're not going to have that discussion here.

[1063] Yes, we are.

[1064] No, we're not.

[1065] Yes, we are.

[1066] No, we're not.

[1067] As part of it, you kind of go, okay, look, here is a quick thing to say here, because that'll make Ray feel like he was heard and was participated with and in the discussion.

[1068] And then let's move on.

[1069] Let's move to the next thing.

[1070] Okay.

[1071] Well, my kind of last question for you, because it actually was, I think, kind of the underbelly of what could have been.

[1072] a debate that ultimately wasn't a debate was, I've now interviewed 200 experts, and they've ranged from the best professors in the world to the best doctors, a fucking crazy privileged group of folks to talk to.

[1073] And if I had to draw a conclusion now at the end of this four -year experiment, my conclusion would be, no one is right.

[1074] And I don't know if that sounds like a weird thing to say to you, but I just, I'll sit with someone who's brilliant.

[1075] They're so fucking.

[1076] and brilliant and there's an aspect of their argument that is bulletproof.

[1077] And then another person has a contrary position and an aspect of their thing.

[1078] And I guess more and more my conclusion is everything is a spectrum.

[1079] Somebody might be 59 % right and someone's 31 % right.

[1080] But the definitive right and wrong, I'm growing less and less drawn to or I believe less and less in it.

[1081] And I just wonder what your thoughts are in that.

[1082] I have a different point of view.

[1083] Okay, great, great.

[1084] Right.

[1085] I tend to think that, look, we always know that we're learning.

[1086] There's a whole bunch about ourselves, about the world that we don't know.

[1087] Being overly certain that, like, I know the following is true, even about stuff you're expert on, entrepreneurship and so forth, is generally speaking better thought of as a heuristic and something you're learning versus a Newtonian law physics.

[1088] And it doesn't mean that you don't have a fair amount of depth.

[1089] Like, I have a pretty good sense of like, well, actually, in fact, if you're going to try to start a business selling this narrow thing to a small number of enterprises, you're unlikely to make that work well.

[1090] And so I'm probably right that that's a terrible idea.

[1091] And so there is claims to knowledge and so forth, but you should always be open to new insights, new experiences, smart challenges from smart people.

[1092] Now, someone walks up to me off the street and says, I know this thing about entrepreneurship, you don't know.

[1093] I more or less ignore them, right?

[1094] Sure, sure, sure.

[1095] Because the higher likelihood of the model is they're crazy than they have something teach me. But even again, that is a percentage call.

[1096] Yes, exactly.

[1097] But that's what we're doing is we're navigating these percentage calls.

[1098] But the percentage calls doesn't mean nobody's right or everybody's wrong.

[1099] But could it be someone's majority right?

[1100] Yeah.

[1101] Someone can be right about, like, for example, I would say that probably about the stuff that I say about entrepreneurship and scale, I'm probably at least 90 % right, but we're still learning.

[1102] Right, right, right.

[1103] I think we're so drawn to the definitive and to, it is the antidote to anxiety, I suppose.

[1104] I'm trying as a person to grow more towards, like, being comfortable in this nebulous of, that's probably 80 % accurate.

[1105] Yeah, well, maintain curiosity and maintain a learning mindset.

[1106] And then you could still say, look, I think I know that this is the way that modern internet media works.

[1107] But by the way, that you might be wrong about some aspects of it now, and you might be, it might be, changing and might just be different next year or the year after.

[1108] So keeping that curiosity and learning mindset, I think is really key.

[1109] I also think we throw a lot of babies out with the bathwater.

[1110] If the expectation is 100 % and you can point out this 5 % that maybe Zuckerberg was wrong, now I can wipe my hands of everything.

[1111] Yes, exactly.

[1112] And like one of the things people frequently say, well, there is no truth.

[1113] There's your truth.

[1114] There's my truth.

[1115] Like, no, there is truth.

[1116] Right.

[1117] The risk of taking the vaccine versus the risk of not taking the vaccine, is decisively, in a COVID thing, much healthier to take the vaccine.

[1118] And what's more articulating the principle that you say, it's my right not to take vaccine.

[1119] It's like, well, it's my right to endanger the hells of the people around me categorically.

[1120] It's like, well, I'm not so sure that that's something I would say that you have a right to do.

[1121] Yeah, yeah.

[1122] But I will just point out in that example, I'm with you, lockstep.

[1123] That's my position on it as well.

[1124] But at the same time, I can recognize if someone's declaring they don't care about their own health in that manner, or they don't think it's beneficial to their own health, then the argument, how could you endanger people around you, holds no water because they don't think it has any detrimental outcome to their own health.

[1125] So I can also wrap my head around what I'm arguing against.

[1126] Yeah, but just because people are wrong about one thing, doesn't mean they're right about the other.

[1127] Right.

[1128] To me, it's a little bit of the secondhand smoke argument.

[1129] It was like, well, don't you?

[1130] It was like, well, no. the person's already fucking declared they don't give a shit about their own lungs.

[1131] So why do you think they're going to care about strangers' lungs?

[1132] Well, but to some degree, you'd say, look, you have a right to kill yourself.

[1133] Yeah, just do it in your house.

[1134] Yes, exactly.

[1135] You don't have a right to kill other people.

[1136] That's the reason why it's an additional one.

[1137] You may say, my religion tells me that I shouldn't get a vaccine.

[1138] You're like, fine.

[1139] If your religion tells you that you should run risks for increased mortality for yourself, you are welcome to do that.

[1140] Yes, yes, yeah.

[1141] But you're religion doesn't allow you to put the rest of us in that same bucket.

[1142] Yeah.

[1143] I'm with you.

[1144] I agree with you.

[1145] Well, Reed, this has been really, really fun.

[1146] I hope we run into each other in real life and I can focus all my attention on you because you're so fun to chat with.

[1147] And likewise, then, next Montana conference at the latest.

[1148] Right.

[1149] And I'll try to keep my opinions on my expertise next time.

[1150] You're giving me a challenge.

[1151] I'm going to try to provoke you on some other topic.

[1152] It's so easy.

[1153] It takes almost nothing to ensnare me. So I hope everyone checks out Masters of Scale, surprising truths from the world's most successful entrepreneurs.

[1154] Of course, the thanks to Adam Grant, as always.

[1155] Every single person he encourages me to talk to is always a slam dunk, wonderful experience.

[1156] So good luck to you read on the book and all your other endeavors.

[1157] And your podcast is fucking great.

[1158] It's so well produced, I want to say.

[1159] I'm listening to it going like, God damn, they spend some time on this.

[1160] And it shows.

[1161] So congrats on a very well -done podcast.

[1162] Well, thank you very much, and I look forward to our future conversations.

[1163] This has been a lot of fun.

[1164] Okay.

[1165] I'll be on yours any time you want.

[1166] Yes.

[1167] Be well.

[1168] All right, you guys too.

[1169] Have a great time.

[1170] Bye.

[1171] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Badman.

[1172] Can you throw me those?

[1173] Absolutely.

[1174] Absolutely.

[1175] Tigris.

[1176] Oh, thank you.

[1177] Do you prefer tigers or lioness?

[1178] Tigris, right?

[1179] Hmm.

[1180] Tigris on the Euphrates?

[1181] I think so.

[1182] They're scarier.

[1183] Well, are they?

[1184] Those lionesses are bad, motherfuckers.

[1185] They do all the hunting.

[1186] They're fighting with hyenas all the time, battling each other.

[1187] They're mean, man. They're 320 pounds of lethalness.

[1188] Do I want to be that?

[1189] Well, here's the thing.

[1190] We all know I'm a chinchilla.

[1191] Hold on, hold on.

[1192] There's an aesthetic component we really need to consider.

[1193] I think I'm drawn to lioness for you, of course, because the lioness's muscles are on full display.

[1194] They're so ripped.

[1195] You know, they look like 300 -pound pit bulls.

[1196] Now, the tiger, much longer hair.

[1197] Oh.

[1198] So they're big.

[1199] They're the same size.

[1200] You just, you don't see any of that muscle definition.

[1201] So it's more if you want to kind of be like soft -looking and still athletic.

[1202] Well, I don't have a lot of muscles.

[1203] So I don't think it's fair for me to be a lioness now.

[1204] That doesn't seem fair.

[1205] It's unfair.

[1206] Well, I do think the tigress has as much muscle.

[1207] It's just not on display.

[1208] Okay.

[1209] So that's, I guess, also the case.

[1210] All right.

[1211] Okay, now we know.

[1212] Tigris.

[1213] Our verdict, Tigris.

[1214] Oh, my gosh.

[1215] Are those new shoes?

[1216] Yeah.

[1217] Okay, so, Husson got me two pairs of shoes.

[1218] Oh, my God, Husson.

[1219] I know, I know, I know.

[1220] What I like most about these shoes, what I like most about both pairs of the shoes, I would have never got them.

[1221] Uh -huh.

[1222] I would never see this on a website and go like, yeah, I love turquoise, bright green, and brown leather.

[1223] And then almost like, like, what is that net?

[1224] that color.

[1225] Oh, it's like a peach almost.

[1226] Yeah, peach.

[1227] There's a salmon.

[1228] Salmon.

[1229] That was the color I was looking for.

[1230] Okay.

[1231] Yeah.

[1232] So salmon, teal, you know, fluorescent green.

[1233] Yeah.

[1234] I'm never order it.

[1235] And I love them.

[1236] I love them.

[1237] Oh, man. They're beautiful.

[1238] You really like them.

[1239] Yeah.

[1240] Okay.

[1241] Great.

[1242] That moves them up.

[1243] Their new balance in case anyone's curious.

[1244] I guess that's, that's relevant.

[1245] Newbies.

[1246] But he and I had only previously talked about Jordi's.

[1247] I know.

[1248] I like that he branched.

[1249] Yeah.

[1250] Well, he's, you know, he's younger.

[1251] He's so confident.

[1252] He is.

[1253] He wears clothes so well.

[1254] He does.

[1255] They don't wear him.

[1256] He wears them.

[1257] He really does.

[1258] Yeah.

[1259] I don't know if my clothes wear me or I wear them.

[1260] I'm not sure.

[1261] You wear them.

[1262] Oh, I do.

[1263] Yeah.

[1264] You pick very specific clothes and you wear them.

[1265] Okay.

[1266] So just like literally I do wear, wear them.

[1267] That's what you're saying.

[1268] Oh, speaking of wearing shit.

[1269] Okay.

[1270] We're in our new sweaters.

[1271] It's so great.

[1272] Our new sweatshers.

[1273] Sweat shirts.

[1274] Sweaters.

[1275] But it's so soft.

[1276] I confused it with a soft.

[1277] sweater from it.

[1278] So if people remember last year we did a marine layer yellow.

[1279] Limited a dish.

[1280] Lim a dish.

[1281] Limited run.

[1282] Yellow.

[1283] And this year we decided to, without getting sued, we were inspired by the McLaren retro paint scheme that's got this beautiful blue in it.

[1284] Oh.

[1285] You love the blue.

[1286] I love the blue.

[1287] It's a baby blue.

[1288] It's a baby, baby blue.

[1289] And so this year we've done baby blue.

[1290] But more than that, and this was Monica's suggestion, she said, what if you draw a picture for the logo?

[1291] And then I did and it looks great.

[1292] You guys are going to love it.

[1293] I'm really proud of it.

[1294] Get ready to press by because they're also a limited run.

[1295] We could do another run?

[1296] We'll see.

[1297] Okay.

[1298] I like a limited.

[1299] We can't do another.

[1300] We can do another color eventually.

[1301] Oh, really?

[1302] Tell me why.

[1303] This is just it.

[1304] We do 500 of the blue.

[1305] This is it.

[1306] Wait, 500?

[1307] Yeah, we're doing 500 this time.

[1308] What did we do last time?

[1309] 250.

[1310] Okay, so we've increased our number.

[1311] I feel like we should do it.

[1312] 10 ,000.

[1313] Well?

[1314] These are the hot.

[1315] This is going to be the hot what do we do if this is a hot they got it that's this is how you keep people on the hook what if we are sitting on ed hardy right now and we don't know don't we are not how dare you this is all a ding ding ding for my gift guide oh great great great great great i love your gift guide by the way my gift guide has been on a roller coaster oh my gosh today was day four the first day a lot of people had negative things to say.

[1316] In what was their main complaint?

[1317] They were just underwhelmed?

[1318] Yeah.

[1319] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1320] One person said they were taking it personally.

[1321] Oh, wow.

[1322] Okay.

[1323] They also, though, they didn't read it right.

[1324] So they thought that those three items was the whole gift guide.

[1325] The whole thing.

[1326] Even though I wrote pretty clearly, I'll be doing this for seven days.

[1327] But laid in the copy?

[1328] Like when you first open it, is that clear?

[1329] in the first four sentences.

[1330] I'm not.

[1331] I'm only attempting to understand it from every angle so that I can really be on your side.

[1332] Let me pull it up.

[1333] Okay.

[1334] Yeah.

[1335] First ever, miniature mouse is.

[1336] This is without clicking.

[1337] If you're scrolling, you'd be able to read this.

[1338] Well, you know what I'm saying?

[1339] I don't know.

[1340] Like if people don't take the time to click on the full body of the message, is it visible in the first two lines?

[1341] No, of course not.

[1342] I would have to go, I guess.

[1343] Let's see.

[1344] No, it's, today's three picks are the last, is the last bit.

[1345] And you're day three of seven.

[1346] Oh, here we go.

[1347] This is exactly what I'm talking about.

[1348] So this is what I can view without clicking on it.

[1349] First ever, miniature mouse is incredibly late and strikingly lackluster gift guide.

[1350] Right there, you're already telling people, this thing sucks.

[1351] So don't complain.

[1352] I'm setting them up.

[1353] Yeah.

[1354] So already, like, you already own that this is lackluster.

[1355] So no one needs to then comment on it.

[1356] Agreed.

[1357] Okay.

[1358] Let me continue.

[1359] Lackluster gift guide.

[1360] I promised you a gift guide.

[1361] So every day for the next week, that is in the first three lines.

[1362] Thank you.

[1363] Okay.

[1364] So now I can just, I can more cleanly levy a verdict.

[1365] Okay.

[1366] Guilty.

[1367] The next two also start with day two of seven.

[1368] Well, I added that after this.

[1369] We learned some.

[1370] Well, I thought maybe I have to be extra clear.

[1371] For the slower members of your audience.

[1372] Yeah.

[1373] And that's all right.

[1374] So at first I was upset.

[1375] Of course, of course.

[1376] You felt personally attacked.

[1377] I felt sad.

[1378] Yeah.

[1379] To what level?

[1380] It was hard for me to tell from the outside.

[1381] Like, is this where I get sincere with her?

[1382] No, I was sincerely like, oh my God.

[1383] Like, wow, people are being mean.

[1384] Well, I hate to tell you this.

[1385] Okay.

[1386] This is a broader, just Murphy's Law.

[1387] Chearing for you on the write -up was really fun.

[1388] Now, it's been three years with you being popular.

[1389] People are like, you know what?

[1390] You know, I'm going to be a little critical now.

[1391] But I'm here to help them with their gifts.

[1392] Okay, and I will say, and I don't know what this means.

[1393] The meaner comments, they were on armchairs.

[1394] So I posted on armchair also an emoji of a shrugging girl.

[1395] Yeah.

[1396] With dark skin, that was me. Okay.

[1397] And it just said, Monica's gift guide, if you can even call it that, is up on her Instagram.

[1398] Personal Instagram.

[1399] Yeah, I realized I couldn't.

[1400] I started to feel weird about posting it on armchair because of all the brands.

[1401] Oh, right.

[1402] Like we would get a call.

[1403] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1404] So I felt like I couldn't do that.

[1405] So anyway, directed people to mine, and then the comments there were...

[1406] Hostile.

[1407] Yeah.

[1408] Well, give me some examples.

[1409] Because this could be a ding, ding, ding from Cooper in the sex use me and a live thing.

[1410] No, this is real.

[1411] But he still thinks that's real, too.

[1412] He refuses to...

[1413] Yeah, you guys are both pretty certain.

[1414] Even though my phone's blowing up every five minutes from some.

[1415] somebody trying to get in the rack with you guys.

[1416] They're all gone.

[1417] I don't see any.

[1418] Really?

[1419] Oh, Rob already went through.

[1420] Maybe they deleted them because...

[1421] After they read, though.

[1422] People, I see people giving them shit.

[1423] Yeah.

[1424] Some people came to my rescue, which was really lovely.

[1425] But I was so upset that I post it after there were mean comments.

[1426] I said, posting three items every day for a week, but for all of you who aren't interested, no need to follow it or comment.

[1427] Smiley face, thanks, exclamation.

[1428] You had to draw a little boundary.

[1429] I did.

[1430] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1431] And I'm okay with that.

[1432] Yeah, yeah.

[1433] You know, it's really funny is I did a boundary and I think it was misread.

[1434] Uh -oh, what was it?

[1435] So it was the Gwyneth episode.

[1436] Uh -huh.

[1437] And she in the past has brought out some assholes in the comments.

[1438] Oh.

[1439] So I posted that episode and then a picture of my gangly foot.

[1440] And I basically said like, in parentheses at the end of it, mean people get blocked.

[1441] Oh.

[1442] as a reference to her.

[1443] Oh, and they thought it was about your friend?

[1444] I think some people, yeah, because there were a couple of responses from dudes like really mean people get blocked.

[1445] Like you can't hear something mean about your foot.

[1446] Oh.

[1447] And so, yeah, that got confusing.

[1448] And then I had the whole thought of like, do I somehow try to add more words to this to make it more?

[1449] Or what am I doing?

[1450] You know, like, what are we doing even?

[1451] What are we doing?

[1452] Twitter's not a real place on planet Earth.

[1453] I almost deleted my Twitter account this weekend.

[1454] You did.

[1455] Yeah, I was like, I haven't opened this app in a hundred years.

[1456] Blah, blah, blah, blah.

[1457] Yeah.

[1458] And just as I was about to delete it, I was like, fuck.

[1459] That is how Leon Bridges responded to me. Like when we were playing his music.

[1460] Yeah, I was like, God, I don't want to lose the channel.

[1461] Yeah, don't.

[1462] But you don't have to look at it.

[1463] I know.

[1464] And someone's going to ask Leon to come on this week or next week.

[1465] Oh, oh, someone is.

[1466] Someone needs to.

[1467] Oh, someone needs to.

[1468] So we need Twitter.

[1469] Fuck, yeah.

[1470] Or he's put into your DMs, though, right?

[1471] Yeah.

[1472] Oh, yeah.

[1473] Look, someone said, they said nobody, absolutely nobody wants wooden spoons for a gift.

[1474] That's not true.

[1475] No, it's not true.

[1476] That's not true.

[1477] I want to them, and I bought them for myself.

[1478] You got to have wooden spoons if you're going to have a stick -free cookware, which I must have.

[1479] I can't spend my life fucking S -OS padding shit.

[1480] I really appreciate you being on my side about that.

[1481] Yes, you're dead right.

[1482] Those people are wrong.

[1483] Thank you.

[1484] There's a lot of nice guys here.

[1485] I'd love to get their hands on you.

[1486] Natalie got wooden spoons for her birthday on Saturday.

[1487] And did she like it?

[1488] Yeah, she asked for them.

[1489] And her friend got her then.

[1490] Oh, my gosh.

[1491] See, there you go.

[1492] I feel validated.

[1493] It wasn't Natalie that made that comment.

[1494] No. You know that for sure.

[1495] And if you cook, you do know they're the best type of utensil and they look the best too.

[1496] You know, it's really interesting.

[1497] I could see where, okay, let's see, now I'm just trying.

[1498] I'm trying my hardest to find this person's real issue.

[1499] What is this person's issue?

[1500] Sure.

[1501] would they take the time to do that?

[1502] And what pops into my mind as a potential motivation is, you know, mothers, rightly so, are like, stop buying me a vacuum.

[1503] I have no, nothing in my stocking.

[1504] No one thought of me. Everything you guys get me is to do more domestic duties.

[1505] Uh -huh.

[1506] So if that's the pattern you're caught in, right?

[1507] Uh -huh.

[1508] And then you're like, don't advise anyone to buy me spoons.

[1509] I want something thoughtful.

[1510] Like, that could have been their weird, unique situation where they're like, No, I don't want more chore stuff.

[1511] But you don't have kids.

[1512] It doesn't represent any of that stuff to you.

[1513] You cook for fun and as a hobby.

[1514] Yeah.

[1515] You know what I'm saying?

[1516] Does that make any sense?

[1517] Yes, but it's not delineated for your mom.

[1518] I do have for your mom, which was towels.

[1519] Not the hint to pussy coffee.

[1520] No. Oh, okay.

[1521] Which was towels.

[1522] Okay.

[1523] And I almost bought those towels from my mom, I thought.

[1524] Like, I'm looking at your gift guide.

[1525] I've told you.

[1526] I love it.

[1527] It's so flattering.

[1528] It's great.

[1529] Thank you.

[1530] And I was like, like, what am I waiting for?

[1531] I should just be absolutely using this gift guide.

[1532] Yeah.

[1533] I think I'm gonna tonight.

[1534] Could you give me a pre?

[1535] Like, do you already know the next three days?

[1536] No. Oh, my God.

[1537] So you panic every morning.

[1538] Oh, here's one more thing that people are upset about.

[1539] Oh, which another grievance.

[1540] Common grievance.

[1541] And I'm not going to apologize for it.

[1542] Okay.

[1543] Some people are upset about the prices.

[1544] Oh, right.

[1545] Which I understand.

[1546] But I've been trying to do a mix.

[1547] Like, you know, I recommended on yesterday, I recommended David Sedaris's book.

[1548] Right.

[1549] That's affordable.

[1550] Absolutely.

[1551] How much were those paddles, those spoons?

[1552] Expensive.

[1553] Okay.

[1554] Yeah.

[1555] But you're getting a lot.

[1556] You're getting 13.

[1557] Oh, my gosh.

[1558] Yeah.

[1559] Baker's doesn't.

[1560] Yeah, I can see where, yeah, yeah.

[1561] Like, I'll post a picture of, you know, my razor.

[1562] Yeah.

[1563] And I get a lot of, like, must be nice.

[1564] And I get it.

[1565] I get it.

[1566] I get it.

[1567] But it's like, it's weird you would.

[1568] bring this up because there's a documentary about the history of Burton, the guy who started Burton snowboards, watching it.

[1569] I was thinking, I got obsessed about pricing.

[1570] Like, what Burton did amazingly is they stayed at just like middle class, upper middle class.

[1571] So it was like a still nice item.

[1572] Yeah.

[1573] But it was one that was achievable.

[1574] Uh -huh.

[1575] Like finding that price point would be so precarious where it's like it always stays elevated where everyone wants it, but it's still within reach of most people.

[1576] It doesn't trigger people into thinking that.

[1577] they don't have enough money.

[1578] Right.

[1579] Like, even Aaron had, I grew up ice skating, so it was like, you really either wanted CCMs or Bowers.

[1580] Okay.

[1581] Bowers are expensive, but Aaron had them.

[1582] You know, like that was his big Christmas present.

[1583] Yeah.

[1584] And so, I don't know, that's just a magic to pricing.

[1585] Yeah.

[1586] It kind of pertains to what you're saying.

[1587] It's like, yeah, there's some things on that list are probably 1 % people things.

[1588] Yeah.

[1589] And there's some things on there that it's 85%.

[1590] And I don't know how people do Christmas.

[1591] Like some people do one huge gift.

[1592] Some people do little, you know, I just don't know.

[1593] But all I can do is speak from my heart.

[1594] Here's the other thing.

[1595] You're not going to lie and say you're using suave soap on your ass.

[1596] That's the truth.

[1597] I want.

[1598] We came up with an acronym, by the way.

[1599] I think we should let everyone in on it.

[1600] Okay.

[1601] It's for the shower.

[1602] Everyone already knows about pits, tits and slits.

[1603] And I thought, well, we should add dicks to this so it's PTSD.

[1604] That's right.

[1605] So pits, dicks, slits, and, no. Pits, tits, slits, and dicks.

[1606] Yeah.

[1607] Pits, tits, slits, and dicks.

[1608] That's it.

[1609] That's what you're washing.

[1610] If you have real PTSD, I'm sorry.

[1611] I'm not at all belittling what you've gone through.

[1612] It's terrible.

[1613] But also PTSD is a sweet acronym for washing your asshole, your asshole, your dick, your vagina, your armpits, and your tits.

[1614] We're not really including asshole.

[1615] Slits.

[1616] That falls under slits.

[1617] But what's weird is you don't need to wash the tits.

[1618] No. That was just kind of extraneous to give it some sex appeals.

[1619] So it carries on.

[1620] Yeah, that's right.

[1621] That's exactly right.

[1622] Okay, so, Reed.

[1623] What companies has Reed invested in or started?

[1624] The problem is, I can't know everything he's invested in, I don't think.

[1625] Yeah, he owns a fund.

[1626] Venture capital firm.

[1627] Yeah, venture capital.

[1628] VC firm.

[1629] Yeah, VC.

[1630] PTSD, pits, tits, slits, and dicks.

[1631] His venture capital firm is called Greylock Partners.

[1632] Uh -huh.

[1633] And he's on the Forbes 2021 list of the world's billionaires.

[1634] Wow.

[1635] I didn't realize that.

[1636] You didn't?

[1637] Uh -uh.

[1638] Oh, yeah.

[1639] He's so normal.

[1640] Yeah, but he started LinkedIn.

[1641] That's a huge.

[1642] Yeah, it's gigantic.

[1643] I liked that I didn't know that and that it didn't feel like that.

[1644] Yeah, LinkedIn is the main.

[1645] Cash cow, golden goose.

[1646] And then PayPal, he was in early.

[1647] Yeah.

[1648] Yeah.

[1649] Guys's good.

[1650] He's really good.

[1651] And it was such an enjoyable conversation.

[1652] I liked him so much.

[1653] It really was.

[1654] He's a polymath.

[1655] And I've turned a corner.

[1656] Oh, what is it?

[1657] On the strange schools.

[1658] Oh, that helped you turn a corner?

[1659] Yeah, and I just thought about it and I was like, I'm being judgmental.

[1660] Oh.

[1661] And I don't need to do that.

[1662] Oh, wow.

[1663] Yeah.

[1664] It was such a good bit, though.

[1665] I know.

[1666] Can you occasionally play along for entertainment's sake?

[1667] Yeah, I'll do whatever.

[1668] It requires.

[1669] Well, that's a big admission.

[1670] Yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, great.

[1671] people found each other like minded people that's great i mean i still have some reservations but overall who cares who cares about my reservations if these people are happy yeah i've got an update in that respect oh let's hear it you know we for years made jokes about a cult and then i was sitting around um just kind of i can't remember what i watched it reminded me but like last year we had like eight black singers on who all learned to sing in the church.

[1672] And I think I was lamenting with John Legend about the fact that like, I'm an atheist, but God, I want some of these things to really be, you know, and then we were watching something where just the gathering of the people and everything.

[1673] And then I started saying out loud, like, someone just needs to lead a movement that's just a movement of congregation on a Sunday.

[1674] Maybe you read some famous literature out loud that starts a conversation, and then you have all the marked things to replace it.

[1675] And you're singing in the whole nine yards.

[1676] And so all of a sudden I saw, I realized, oh, my God, this is me becoming a cult leader.

[1677] I've convinced myself of this movement that has to happen where people can congregate and enjoy community.

[1678] And then I was like even having the thought that that you were going to do that?

[1679] Yes, all of a sudden I am slowly evolving into a cult leader.

[1680] but I caught myself.

[1681] Thank God I'm here.

[1682] Yeah, but when I was describing this utopian following without a deity, were you in for a minute?

[1683] No. I mean, yes, I like community, but I don't like when one person is in charge of the community.

[1684] Listen, that was my mastermind, is the whole thing set up as AA, and there's a revolving door of people who lead the thing at the beginning.

[1685] And I even came up with this speech that they all have to give before they start.

[1686] Oh, my God.

[1687] Listen to this.

[1688] They're going to say to everyone, standing on this stage reading to you, but that means absolutely nothing.

[1689] I'm just going to pass on someone else's knowledge to you and that I have no elevated standing.

[1690] So everything starts with a reminder that no one isn't more important.

[1691] And then you like dive into some fun theoretical stuff.

[1692] Look at that.

[1693] You look so scared right now.

[1694] I'm scared because you've thought a lot about this.

[1695] Oh, I spent two hours in bed thinking about this.

[1696] That someone has to give this animal that's been designed to be religious another option.

[1697] All right.

[1698] Can't they just do their normal thing, which is go to church?

[1699] But the thing I was watching is, oh, Jesus, now I got to remember what it was that I was watching.

[1700] Because, of course, oh, it's dope sick.

[1701] Oh, I need to see.

[1702] So no. Why?

[1703] Because this poor girl who's struggling with opiate addiction, which is its own thing that needs a very specific treatment.

[1704] Yeah.

[1705] The family's very religious.

[1706] So they just want to bring her back into the church.

[1707] And, of course, for a moment, that works because the community and the love and the support.

[1708] But then she's being asked to build the foundation of her sobriety on God.

[1709] And God's not going to be with her at certain hours of the day.

[1710] It's just not a good plan.

[1711] Yeah, but your cult isn't good for that either.

[1712] She needs to go to A .A. That's what I'm saying.

[1713] Right.

[1714] So what I was, that's what got me thinking about it is like, it's a shame that you can't experience what's so healing and beautiful.

[1715] about that experience for her without having to also swallow the God aspect.

[1716] That's what made me think of it.

[1717] So this girl eventually had to leave there because she couldn't jump on board with that, which left her nowhere, kind of.

[1718] But she, yes, needed to go to A, for sure.

[1719] Yeah.

[1720] But I just was, I was thinking that there's a price tag with religion.

[1721] If there's a God, then you need to avail yourself to God to fix you.

[1722] And I'm nervous that God from heaven doesn't fix addicts.

[1723] Right.

[1724] Right, but I don't think your cult fixes addicts.

[1725] This wasn't in an attempt for me to replace AA, but I just was aware of a bad aspect of a deity -derived religion.

[1726] Okay.

[1727] And then so I was looking at all those people in there that aren't addicts, that they're not going to go to AA, but what can they have that doesn't involve some guy in the sky who thinks being a lesbian is wrong?

[1728] That's part of her issue in the story.

[1729] How do you give those people that beautiful thing that they have without the person deciding what's moral in a moral all the time.

[1730] I know, but I think they just have to find.

[1731] What would be wrong with the secular?

[1732] Church?

[1733] Yeah.

[1734] Secular gathering area.

[1735] Meet your neighbors.

[1736] Learn to see one another.

[1737] Talk about what could be good in your neighborhood.

[1738] I don't know.

[1739] Well, we have that.

[1740] And none of, we never go to the potluck.

[1741] What is it?

[1742] Oh, I want to.

[1743] I've been.

[1744] We were out of town twice.

[1745] We went one.

[1746] Yeah, we went.

[1747] It was fun, right?

[1748] You're so confused.

[1749] You're so mixed.

[1750] Oh, gosh.

[1751] Tell me. Because you don't want to spend time with random people, I know you.

[1752] But I think the fact that I went says that I have this higher calling to go against what my desire is.

[1753] Well, that's lovely.

[1754] Yeah, like, I'm there because I know a better version of me as a citizen of this neighborhood.

[1755] And it's not too big to go to the neighborhood barbecue.

[1756] I don't want to be seen that way.

[1757] Yeah, but it doesn't have to be too big.

[1758] It's just like I'm, I feel like that's codependent.

[1759] If it's like, oh, my God, all these people are going to think that I'm too good.

[1760] So I have to go.

[1761] But I don't want to go.

[1762] I'd rather spend time with people I care about.

[1763] Well, I think it's hard to find the line between codependency and also being a group animal.

[1764] Like, people should be listening to the messages in their group.

[1765] You know, if there was consensus about people, generally that's true.

[1766] You're not on an island.

[1767] Yeah.

[1768] So I guess in some way, I have enough respect for that that might be in the same.

[1769] soup.

[1770] If I was not on TV, would I want to go to that thing?

[1771] Maybe.

[1772] So maybe they're right if I don't go.

[1773] You wouldn't want to go.

[1774] Okay.

[1775] Well, yeah, I was like punk rock.

[1776] I try to be different all the time.

[1777] So maybe I wouldn't have gone.

[1778] But anyways, it's complicated.

[1779] So I go because I think the best version of me goes to those things.

[1780] Okay.

[1781] That's nice.

[1782] Yeah.

[1783] That's nice.

[1784] Yeah.

[1785] Which is why I want you to join my new religion.

[1786] Oh, God.

[1787] Yeah.

[1788] So I just, I want you, I want you to feel safe in that I busted myself.

[1789] It doesn't sound like you busted it.

[1790] It sounds like you still think it's a great idea.

[1791] sounds like you're still I just gotta not be involved with it oh oh no then you're like this this like ethereal leader everyone like knows about but they don't yeah BTS and sexy and so sexy so mysterious Bradley Karen Cooper PTSD um okay this is a real ding ding ding if you haven't watched the 2020 House of Horrors I gotta watch that This is a must.

[1792] Do you want to watch it and then we'll talk about it next time?

[1793] Yeah, I am going to watch it.

[1794] Did you grab it on Hulu?

[1795] It's on Hulu.

[1796] Okay.

[1797] Oh, wow.

[1798] Just so people, if they don't know, it's about this family in California.

[1799] In 2018, they got caught because they were hoarding their children, basically.

[1800] They had 13 kids.

[1801] And they were chaining them up and abusing them.

[1802] They had never left the house, right?

[1803] No, they had like a couple times, but with the parents and like under...

[1804] Lock and key.

[1805] Exactly.

[1806] It's room.

[1807] Yeah.

[1808] The movie Room.

[1809] And one of the girls escapes and calls 911 and she can't really talk and it.

[1810] Yeah.

[1811] It led to a real weird ethical conversation at Thanksgiving evening.

[1812] Because she's so pretty.

[1813] Yeah, I was so delighted I had not seen it.

[1814] But a lot of members of the pod saw it.

[1815] And then slowly everyone had to acknowledge that she was super hot, which became like this whole thing like oh i'm looking at photos right now yeah yeah and she's like got a tic -tok it's pretty intense yeah yeah you're just damned if you do you're damned if you don't like if you find you're attracted to her you're like oh there's a victim i shouldn't be attracted to her right and if you're not attracted to her you're like come on man she wants to be celebrated yeah for being beautiful and you're seeing it in the way that and she's a victim she would by the way she would hate if somebody was like oh i can't call her beautiful because she's like she wants that yes so it's very it's very complicated.

[1816] Yeah, life is best of you.

[1817] It's a boys in a mess.

[1818] It is a mess.

[1819] All right.

[1820] I love you.

[1821] Love you too.

[1822] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1823] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[1824] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.