All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Charlie Kirk Murder, Assassination Culture in America, Jimmy Kimmel Suspended, Ellison Media Empire

Starting point is 00:00:00 Okay, everybody, there's no easy way to start today's show. Eight days ago, Charlie Kirk was savagely murdered while doing what Americans love to do, debate. And when someone is senselessly killed like this, especially at a young age and at the hands of another human, try to make sense of it. It's only natural. And it's hard to imagine anything worse than a young father of two, just 31 years old, and entering the best and most productive years of his life being killed by a 22-year-old who's barely out of adolescence. our hearts go out to the Kirk family, his friends, fans, and every American who understands that no one should be killed for expressing their beliefs. That's the core of the great American experiment. So let's keep that experiment alive today and the memory of Charlie Kirk

Starting point is 00:00:45 by continuing the great debate. Besties is a lot to process here as a community, a country, a society, and I just want to check everybody's temperature at the top of the program. We're obviously not going to do a cold open here because that would be inappropriate. But Chumap, how are you processing the last eight days? I actually wrote down something as well, which I normally don't do. I just like to kind of react, but let me just read that and then maybe we can just talk from there. So to me, what Tyler Robinson illustrates is the emergence of a lost generation that was shaped by COVID, I see years of isolation, a reliance on screens, and an immersion in online subcultures that have created a vacuum where some young men are drifting in without any grounding,

Starting point is 00:01:46 no institutions, no friends, no communities, no family. And out of that void, I think what comes out can at best only be called ideological incoherence. Somebody used the word salad bar extremism. These individuals are not clearly aligned with any one ideology completely, but they seem to be assembling fragments of memes, of conspiracies, of cultural signals, into an unstable identity, and in some cases now, it's exploding into violence. I think the most troubling consequence isn't just the facts themselves, which is abhorrent, and I feel incredibly bad for all of Charlie's friends and his family and his children, obviously himself. But beyond the act itself, there's an enormously chilling effect, I think, on public discourse. When you express an

Starting point is 00:02:49 idea, it cannot be that then you risk becoming a target. Because the ultimate outcome of that is fewer people will then enter the public debate. And then what happens is the range of acceptable dialogue really narrows. And it only leaves space then for the most benign voices in the public square. And if you have that kind of anodyne discussion, I just think you have very bad outcomes for society. I've watched a lot of his content since he was murdered, and I'm still trying to grapple with why people could not shout the man down if they disagreed with him and instead shot the man down. And I think that that is a completely unacceptable response for what he thought.

Starting point is 00:03:45 That's what I was. It's well said. Freeberg, you're... I think it wasn't his controversy. It was his effectiveness. He was too smart, too open, too honest, too willing to engage in discourse, too willing to debate. He was too effective in changing people's minds.

Starting point is 00:04:08 And I think that's why he became such a cultural threat. And it wasn't necessarily the things he said, because there are people out there who say far more controversial things than Charlie. It's that he sounded sensible and he changed people's minds through his discourse. And as he changed people's minds, I think he became a real threat to the ideologies that he spoke up against. And I think that's why he was targeted. And it's obvious that if he wasn't as effective as he is, if he wasn't as smart, as empathetic, as optimistic, as honest, as direct as he was, he wouldn't have been a target, perhaps.

Starting point is 00:04:46 And it was very sad. One of the things that we've seen is the power of going direct, sort of like what we did with this podcast. He went direct. He went to college campuses, but he also recorded it and put it on the internet, and millions of people saw it. And that new form of media, that new form of communication, where someone can actually have a town square, the internet.

Starting point is 00:05:09 that they can stand out and speak their mind and be heard. There's no longer these filters and these controlling powers of influence that decide what we get to know and not know and what our opinions need to be. The media and the traditional kind of systems are being degraded. I think it's important to continue that. And I think one of the things that I've been optimistic about, I was very sad and angry the day this happened. I called Chamath.

Starting point is 00:05:31 I was actually tearful that day. But since that time, I think it's been amazing to see the optimist. not just from one side, but from a lot of different people from different backgrounds standing up and saying discourse is so important and re-underwriting this American process. So I'm very sad, but I'm very hopeful that people take this as a sign of how important this discourse is. Sacks, I don't know if you knew him, but obviously he was instrumental, I think, in the MAGA movement, the conservative movement, and moving so many young people over to it.

Starting point is 00:06:09 Did you know him? Did you interact with him? What was he like? And how are you feeling eight days into this? I know this is the second assassination attempt. Third, actually, in this recent political season, two on Trump, and now this one. So this feels pretty dark. How are you feeling? Yes, Jason. I knew him and I considered Charlie a friend. I started doing his show, his radio show. A few years ago, he invited me on and I came on his show. And he proceeded to have me back. I mean, I think I went on the show about half a dozen times. It was always on a wide range of issues. But usually when I was on his show, we talked about tech. We talked about things like censorship. We talked foreign policy. He was extremely versatile in the issues he could speak about. And you see that when he was speaking on campuses, he would really take on all comers. and every possible issue would be thrown at him, and he'd always have a well-thought-out response. But in any event, I always tried to say yes to him. I always move things around my schedule. When he asked me to come on the show, I just felt that he was a very positive person,

Starting point is 00:07:14 very upbeat about the future. I think that he engaged in a very respectful type of debate with people. You see this on college campuses. He saw every opponent as someone that he could potentially persuade and convinced to convert to his side. there are clips of him going around where he explains that we all have to engage in dialogue and a democracy because the alternative where we stop talking is that we become enemies and eventually at least to violence. And he was very concerned about the rise of assassination culture.

Starting point is 00:07:45 He wrote about this months before his death. And so in a way, he almost, I don't think he saw his own death coming, but he definitely saw this disturbing rise of violence as the alternative to free speech and an open discourse. And he dropped out of college when he was 18 to start turning point. I mean, it was sort of a force of nature who put together this organization from scratch. And he would go on these college campuses and kind of put down his soapbox or tent and chair under a banner that said, prove me wrong. And he would engage people in conversation.

Starting point is 00:08:19 Liberals like to use this term platforming. It's usually the prelude to, you know, justifying why someone needs to be denied the opportunity to speak on a tech platform. But Charlie wasn't platform by somebody else. He created his own platform. He created this organization from scratch. And he was platforming liberals or leftists or woke or whoever. He was giving them the opportunity to debate with him. And his crowds got larger and larger people like to see him speak and engage in these debates. And he was platforming the other side and giving them the opportunity. But like Freeberg was saying, the more he did it, the more became clear that his views were very well thought out. And oftentimes the other side, sides weren't. And if one side became hysterical, it was always the other side. It was never Charlie. He was always sort of cool, common collected. And he was winning the debate. He was winning the debate very effectively. And I think he was revealing in a lot of cases that these woke students had these very strongly held views, but they couldn't really explain beyond the level of cliches why they believe what they believe. I mean, when he would just start to socratically ask them

Starting point is 00:09:24 questions. It was rare that you'd get someone on the other side who could go multiple questions deep with him and debate him with the level of knowledge that he had. And so I think that fundamentally is why he was winning the debate. And that's why I think that so many people of his generation and younger were really paying attention is because he was offering them something that they weren't getting elsewhere. They weren't getting it through the school system. the school systems were kind of drilling at their heads, this sort of woke catechism about what they're supposed to believe. And he was actually offering them critical thinking and dialogue and debate. And I think it's why young people were flocking to him in droves. And I do think that

Starting point is 00:10:06 ultimately the reason why he was killed is because he was so effective at engaging in this kind of debate. And we have it in the killer's own words. I mean, the killer signed this very detailed confession. I should say, texted it to his alleged roommate lover about why he did it. And he said that, in his view, Charlie represented something hateful. And then I think the key thing he said right after that was the killer said, I had enough of his hatred, some hate can't be negotiated out. So in other words, there's no imperative to engage in dialogue or debate or discourse with people who disagree with you, countering their arguments with better ones, they just need to be silenced by any means necessary. That's basically the killer described his own motive, is that he

Starting point is 00:10:57 essentially just thought that there are views that just have to be silenced with extreme violence, with murder, and that that was justifiable. And I think this is what I think hit a nerve for the whole country. I mean, beyond those of us who knew Charlie and concerned him a friend and how much sadness and grief that we have over losing him and for his wife and for his kids are going to grow fatherless now. I think that we all felt that this was a huge invasion of the town square of the marketplace of ideas. This has happened on a college campus, which is supposed to be the ultimate marketplace of ideas. It's supposed to be the place where people engage in reasoned discourse to work out our differences. And so it felt like an assault on the citadel of democracy.

Starting point is 00:11:43 Freyberg, you set up this amazing panel we just released, which I think we all agree was kind of a sleeper panel at the summit with two of the heads of colleges. And we talked deeply at the summit about dialogue and freedom of speech and nurturing that. Your thoughts on sort of college campuses and the free expression of ideas. Whether it's the college campus or whether Charlie Kirk and that genre moves people via the internet, one of the things we talked about it with the head of Berkeley and the head of Dartmouth is that college needs to be a place that teaches kids how to think, not what to think. And I think that was one of the things that Charlie exemplified better than anyone in this kind of modern media genre

Starting point is 00:12:33 is showing people that you can have a discourse, you can have a debate, you can have a dialogue in the same way that as a group, we've had fights, we've had disagreements, we've had different points of view that we challenge each other on. One of the things early on when we started doing this podcast was people telling me that they thought it was so cool to see friends argue like this and have discourse and have debate and we still do it. And I think Charlie exemplify that and that teaches people how to think and it allows them to form their own point of view. I do not believe in this notion that some system or some institution should be telling us what the truth is or what to believe or what reality needs to be.

Starting point is 00:13:17 They can present us with the facts and the evidence that they've sourced and they can give us a recommendation. But ultimately, we need to have agency as individuals to form our own belief systems, to form our own opinions, to make our own decisions. And I think what made Charlie so powerful was his ability to teach people how to do that, how to have a discourse and reason your way to an opinion. And I think that's one of the things that's changed so much.

Starting point is 00:13:42 in the last 20 years is just this idea that, you know, there's truth and there's not truth, and whatever one institution tells you is truth and the other institution tells you is not truth, as opposed to giving ourselves individual agency. I was in his target audience, and so I was aware of Charlie Kirk, but I had only seen, you know, flipping through social media once in a while, some of the clips. So I took the time to knowing we're going to talk about it here, watch at least 40 or 50 of these interactions, listen to a couple of his podcasts. And, you know, my takeaway from it was, to your point, Sacks, he was incredibly respectful to people. He disagrees. It's certainly more respectful than you at times, Sax, when we have debates. And he was actually playful. He was gregarious with these kids when they didn't understand something. And there's a lot of talk right now, people trying to, you know, point out where he was wrong. By the way, you don't get to murder somebody because you believe they're wrong. And I know this sounds like the most obvious statement in the world.

Starting point is 00:14:42 But what I came away with was he reminded me of all the Catholics, my family members I grew up with. He was four family values. He was against abortion. He had specific feelings on affirmative action or DEI that we all might agree with. He might have said them at times in a spicy way or in a really full contact debate. But these were the same conversations I had with, you know, growing up. And, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, a, you know, a. situation where I'm just perplexed, and I guess it goes back to where you started, Chamath,

Starting point is 00:15:17 that there are some number of people who are sick right now in our society. And it seems to be young men. It seems to be the COVID generation. How does a person that is seemingly a 4.0 student on the right track, getting a scholarship, how do you so severely go off the rails? And then how do you end up in a place where you believe that something like this is even tolerated or justified? How can a person that's that seemingly intelligent get to that place? From a conservative family. It seemed like he had his whole life ahead of him and was on a right track at a certain age. And if he's capable of it, how many other people are going to end up in that place? So what is happening that basically allows these young men to become so

Starting point is 00:16:07 unwarred. I think a lack of socialization, and we don't know in this case, but I have very deep concerns about these SSRIs, Adderall, these kids have all kinds of mental health issues, and then they get put on a lot of different prescription drugs. We don't know if that's the case here, so I'm not speculating about that, but just talking about this generation in general, you know, if they are permanently online, they're part of these subcultures, if they are being, you know, having their brain scrambled with all these different drugs. Many young people are on two or three different medications, and I'm not necessarily anti them, but I do have a concern of them being massively oversubscribed. His entire justification

Starting point is 00:16:50 for this, beyond the fact that it's completely abhorrent and unacceptable, is also completely all over the place. I actually asked my team, explained to me the things that this guy wrote down. Like, where did they come from? One of it is from a video game called Hell Drivers 2. one is from the furry subculture. Another one is a fascist theme from a Netflix show. What is going on? Yeah. Well, look, I mean, we know some things about the killer's ideology from what his family said, from what other people who knew him said, and from what he put in his own text messages explaining why he perpetrated this murder. And I think a big part of it was that in his view, the basically mainstream conservative views that Charlie was discussing were, in his view, they were

Starting point is 00:17:43 hateful and they were fascist. I think on one of the bullet casings, he etched, catch this fascist. He had this view that, first of all, that violence is justified as a way to end a political debate and that relatively mainstream conservative thought was so hateful and beyond the pale that need to be stopped. And I'd like to say that those views are so unusual that nobody else has them. But the truth is, if you look at the data, if you look at polling, you see that there's been a huge rise on the part of young people, and particularly on the left, although there's some on the right, but it's mostly on the left. They believe now that political violence can be justified. Yeah. And so you look, I mean, there's, there's been many different ways of getting

Starting point is 00:18:33 at this. There was a study, I guess, Rutgers University, the social perception lab. They asked about whether the murder of Donald Trump or Elon Musk could be justified. And 50% of leftist center said yes. 14% of right of center said yes. Even that number is shocking to me. How could it be one percent? Obviously it's it's three times greater on the left. Then they asked about destroying Tesla dealerships and protests, whether that could be justified. And roughly 60% of leftist center said yes. And 23% of right of center said yes. So there is, I think, an increasing view on the part of young people. And this also coincides with similar declines in respect for the value of free speech. They've been polling people of all different age groups and different

Starting point is 00:19:25 political parties for many, many years of whether they believe in free speech. And those numbers have been on the decline, again, particularly among young people, and particularly on the left. And so you see it now in the data that there is a generation of young liberals, I mean, obviously not all, to be sure, but a sizable contingent who believe that the other side is so hateful that it's okay to use violence against them. And that is a huge societal problem because democracy ends when we can't debate ideas. What's at the root of it? I have two things I think are at the root of this. I talked a little bit earlier about the medication that they're putting all these kids on. And I'm going to keep talking about it because we're talking about upwards of 20% our kids have been on SSRIs or on Adderall or some stimulant right now.

Starting point is 00:20:25 And it's not possible that all these kids need this. And there is many other solutions to it. And then I'll add the algorithms, not that an algorithm is responsible for the murder, but we are taking people down rabbit holes online. And in fact, Charlie's content was exceptional at engaging people, right? Short form, you know, really interesting debates and all that kind of stuff. And that combination of being online too much, being over-medicated, being isolated. You put all that together, Chimov,

Starting point is 00:20:55 and I think that's what leads to these kind of extreme theories and disconnects from reality. But we could also be dealing with somebody who is severely mentally ill. And we're trying to understand a severely mentally ill persons. Hold on a second. Hold on. You're starting to sound a little bit like Paul Graham there, that this is just some sort of random nut. Here's why it's not just some random nut.

Starting point is 00:21:14 First of all, we have an extraordinarily detailed statement and confession from the killer, giving us a lens into his motives. but I would say the even bigger thing is the reaction of hundreds of thousands of people online who celebrated this murder, who were gleeful, who expressed some degree of happiness about it, or try to downplay what the killer had done by saying on some level that Charlie Kirk deserved it. So you have to ask, where does that come from? And I think this has to do again with the ideology of the left, not the traditional old left, because I think the sort of old left really believed for free speech, maybe anybody else, you know, like, you know, folks like not hent off and so.

Starting point is 00:21:58 And by the way, I think guys who I would consider kind of more old left like Bernie Sanders and Ezra Klein put out excellent statements denouncing this murder agreeing with this core idea that political violence is never acceptable. And then they were shattered down, which is insane. To Ezra, he got, he got crushed for it. That tells you something too. So look, I think that the psychotic brain. break, if you will, that is now occurring in a bunch of different cases, may be exacerbated by, who knows, medication, by isolation experience during COVID or what have you. But there is clearly a huge ideological component to this, that there are huge numbers of people, even if they

Starting point is 00:22:37 don't commit the crime themselves, who celebrate it. Because they have had drums into their head for decades now. The idea that the other side are fascists, their leader is like Hitler. What do you do to Hitler. You have to stop him at all costs, right? And I think that is a significant part of the problem here. Now, you ask now, where does this ideology come from? I think it's going from the school system. I mean, we've had now for the last couple of decades this sort of woke ideology, this cultural Marxism, be taught through the school system where they drum into the kids that there are two kinds of people, oppressors or oppressed, and they divide people into these groups and say that the oppressors have to be stopped. And that's really as deep as the discussion

Starting point is 00:23:21 gets. And if you want to get a sense for this exaggerated, destructive rhetoric, just look at the new book that has come out by Randy Weingarten, who is basically the head of our school system because she runs the teachers' unions. And they're the ones who have all the political power. She wrote why fascists hate critical thinking. And by the way, this is not just an article. I guess Rolling Stone did an excerpt. This is an entire book. And the book is called Why Fascist Fear Teacher. So she's basically saying that Trump and all of his supporters are fascists. The FBI stopped. You've had this hyperbolic rhetoric. For a decade, you've had the press describe Trump as some sort of new Hitler. To use Scott Adams' term, they've basically Hitlerized

Starting point is 00:24:09 him. And so you ask, you know, we don't know exactly where Tyler Robinson imbibed all of these ideas, but you have to also take into account that probably since he was 12 years old, the media, the mainstream media, has been beating into his head that the leader of the United States is a new Hitler, and the worst thing that could ever happen is his return, and his supporters are fascists. And I'm sure this has to play into, if not his thinking, the thinking of the people who are celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. Because they have bought into this idea that the other side are fascists who have to be stopped at all costs. Yeah, I think it's important to point out, as you did, Mondami, Nancy Pelosi, gosh, AOC,

Starting point is 00:24:56 Ezra Klein, they all came out just very strongly that this is horrible, unacceptable, and they can, you know, obviously, I think it's abhorrent. So I think that leadership is strong, and I think that's what we need to see more of is people trying to tone this down and, and, Yeah, not exacerbated. Look, I think you're right. I think that what we need to see from all of our political leaders is a condemnation of this murder in particular and political violence in general without any caveats whatsoever, without intimations that somehow Charlie Kirk deserved it, without this exaggerated rhetoric that the other side are fascist, that Trump is Hitler, and so on. there just needs to be an unequivocal denunciation of this crime and political violence and the idea that we can settle our differences in this manner.

Starting point is 00:25:53 And I give credit to any liberal or Democrat politicians who say that, but unfortunately, that has not been the discussion. I think that's been one of the most disturbing things about this, is that if it had just been Tyler Robinson, and everybody agreed that this is a heinous act, a heinous murder. I think that we wouldn't have had the same national conversation. So it would have been awful. But I think the reason why this became such a national conversation is that we can all see that living among us, you have huge numbers of people who've been indoctrinated into what Scott Adams called this Hitler bubble. And I think it's a real question, what we're going to do to get out of this bubble.

Starting point is 00:26:34 Because in order to have civil society, we have to have the ability to engage in conversations, to have political debates without fear of violence or murder. And when you have a sizable contingent of people in our society who've deviated from that, it makes you really worry for the future of our society. And it makes you wonder, what are we going to do about this? And there's a whole trans angle to this that is being talked about, but maybe people are withholding a little bit. But he was answering a trans question when he was shot by somebody who's,

Starting point is 00:27:11 I guess girlfriend would be the right way to say it. It was in the middle of transitioning. So there's many different angles here that we're going to try to understand over time. Right. And then in response to that, you saw an ABC news reporter describe the text chain, which was a murder confession, as touching. You know, and so now I think that a reporter has published an apology, so I'm not going to dwell on that part of it.

Starting point is 00:27:38 But I think what you see here is an upside-down morality. What Tyler Robinson did was an act of hate, the ultimate act of hate. He committed murder. He left a wife without a husband. He left two children without a father. It was the ultimate act of hate. But in his twisted mindset, it was somehow an act of love. And the question is, how do we get to this place? And again, if it was just Tyler Robinson, then we could just chalk it up to the random nut theory. But we don't know the random nut who shot Trump. Like we don't have any information on that person either. So. Right. But what bothers me more, again, are all these people in Reddit groups or online and Blue Sky, which is just a cesspool of hate now, who are celebrating? Celebrating to some degree. No, there are definitively people celebrating. This is why I really think one of the most constructive things that we can do coming out of this is we have to find out how to course correct these people. Actually, J.K. Rowling had a really good tweet on this. So she says that if you believe free speech is for you, but not your political

Starting point is 00:28:46 opponents, you're illiberal. I mean, I think we've known that for a while. And I don't know if the woke left cares about that anymore. But in any event, she then goes on to say, if no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian. And then I think the most important one is if you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist. And I think actually this was an act of terrorism in the sense that it was designed to discourage other people from speaking out. Again, it was done in the most public place in this town square. But I think what rallying is getting at here is that in order for civil society to survive, we're going to need

Starting point is 00:29:27 some sort of minimum standard of decency. You know, I remember when we were in college, we used to have these like thought experiment type questions, which is how much intolerance can a tolerant society tolerate things like that? And I think we have our answer, which is, listen, you can say whatever you want. But our minimum standard of decency in a society is that you cannot use violence to settle political disagreements. And if you cannot accept that, I mean, really, that should be the pledge. Instead of, frankly, Grover-Norquist tax pledge, or even the pledge about deficit spending, I think we need to, a minimum decency pledge, that political violence is unacceptable. And if you can't sign that

Starting point is 00:30:11 pledge, you should not be participating in the discourse. I mean, the fact that you have to even suggest signing a pledge to not murder people you disagree with shows how far gone this all is and how disturbing it is. That just should be something that is inherent in every human being in their operating system. You just don't murder people because you disagree with them. All right. It's obviously, yeah, this is an evolving story. We don't have a all the answers here. But you see the Jimmy Kimmel comments and should we play those and talk about it? Yeah, I guess it's a pretty good segue here.

Starting point is 00:30:44 So political discourse adjacent related, the fallout from the murder of Charlie Kirk is going to stay with us for some time here. ABC has suspended Jimmy Kimmel from Jimmy Kimmel Live indefinitely after he made the following remarks and pressure from the FCC and the affiliates of ABC. Here's the 15-second clip. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger pointing, there was grieving. And he goes on to show a clip of Trump.

Starting point is 00:31:25 Yeah, but I think you also left out that sentence right after that where he says, yeah, there was grieving, but it was like a four-year-old grieving the death of a goldfish. Yeah. So, yeah, pretty inappropriate comments, I think. And here's the timeline of it. So, because there was some thinking this could have been a MAGA person because the parents were conservatives. And during that breaking news, you know, maybe that first sentence wouldn't be as off-putting or inaccurate as it seems to be. But he said it Monday night. And this was three days after we knew about the anti-fascist bullet king. facing so that Chimoth was referencing, hey, fascist catch, et cetera. And this was one day after Utah's governor was very clear that this was a murderer who had leftist ideology. And one day after it was disclosed that Robinson had been living with a transpartner, which may or may not turn out to be relevant. You could totally be gay or have a trans partner or any of that and may have nothing to do with this or it could have everything to do with this. So we'll have to wait

Starting point is 00:32:31 and see. And Jake, how wasn't the, what's the text messages out by then as well? Well, the text message was part of this very good. Those were actually released on Tuesday after the show aired. And they usually tape in the afternoons for those nightly shows, just so people know that. So there was enough information here that, you know, he was inaccurate or spinning the story, however you want to phrase it. It was clumsy.

Starting point is 00:32:55 Megan Kelly put out a very long description of everything that was known prior to Jimmy Kimmel's remarks. And there was a huge amount of information to indicate that this was someone who was in the grips of a radical leftist ideology and no evidence to suggest that they were somehow part of MAGA. And what Jimmy Kimmel did there was viciously lie, I think, implying or stating outright that effectively Charlie Kirk was killed by one of his own by a MAGA person, thereby, I think, diminishing the crime somehow. imply maybe that he deserved it. And then he diminished the sincere grief and outrage that millions of people are feeling, you know, beyond those of us who were friends with Charlie and knew Charlie, but millions of people. But that is okay. You know, in free speech sacks, that statement, that's his choice. He might lose audience over it, but free speech protects him doing that. The challenge was,

Starting point is 00:33:53 did he say something that he knew to be not true and declare it as fact? And did that, kind of was the reaction that he got. Yeah. Yeah. And so if he said something that he knew... Well, just reading his sentence, you know, he was saying, we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them. So he's

Starting point is 00:34:16 referencing the weekend. So he, you know, you could say he's being disingenuous here. But I think he's not being factually inaccurate. He's supposed to be a late night comedian. It is it is inaccurate. It's highly inaccurate. It's a lie. And it's a vicious lie. I'm not defending it, but it was not inaccurate that people were doing that speculation. During a podcast on Tuesday, FCC chair, Brendan Carr, who we all know, said the FCC

Starting point is 00:34:41 would look into revoking the broadcast license of ABC affiliates because Jimmy Kennel, Kimmel was engaging in, quote, news distortion by falsely claiming Tyler Robinson was MAGA. On Wednesday, next door one of ABC's affiliates that has 28 local stations said it would be replacing Kimmel's show with different programming. And there's now this backstory that Neckstar is buying a rival for $6 billion. So the speculation is like the CBS and Paramount situation where they fired Colbert on July 17th, that they don't want to get caught up in having the 47th administration coming up their M&A activity. And then ABC, after all that, pull Jimmy Kimmel in definitely.

Starting point is 00:35:25 So I guess the question here, Sachs, that's the hard of things. Pull up the ratings over time. Just pull up that chart. We'll get to all that, but let me just ask the question. Do you have concerns about this acts? Obviously, you've been very pro-free speech here. Do you think that this is overreaching? If he hurt people's feelings, if he said something inaccurate, do you think he should be, the government should be taking him off the air, putting pressure on them to take him off the air? Well, no, the government shouldn't be ordering him to be taken off the air, but neither President Trump nor the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, did that. The reason why Kimmel lost his, job is because the two largest affiliates, which is Nexstar and Sinclair, told ABC Disney that they wouldn't air it anymore. And I think part of this is due to the genuine offense at what he said, which, okay, I guess you can put the best face you want on it. It was false, and it was a flip way of describing something that was causing pain to millions of Americans. Neckstar called his remarks offensive and insensitive. That is true. And then Sinclair said that they're going to

Starting point is 00:36:28 air a Kirk Tribute and Kimmel's time slot on Friday. So look, I think this is about the affiliates. First of all, finding what he said, completely offensive. But then secondarily, the truth is that I think there's a lot of opportunism in this. And this is really about poor ratings. Kimmel has even worse ratings than Stephen Colbert, who recently got canceled because his show was too expensive and not enough people were watching it. And I think that what's happening here is the ABC affiliates are, frankly,

Starting point is 00:36:58 they're seizing an opportunity to rid themselves of this money-losing disaster. And they're getting back that hour of television for other things. The question is whether Carr should have said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. That's what I'm sort of referencing in terms of the government putting pressure on these folks to cancel him. Well, look, what Carr was asked whether by, I think he was on Benny Johnson's show, and Benny asked whether there's anything can be done about this. And then Carr said that there is a public interest requirement with respect to the broadcast networks. So if Jimmy Kimmel's show was on a podcast or on cable, that public interest requirement wouldn't apply. But because those affiliates receive public spectrum for free, there is a requirement. that the reporting be truthful to some degree and serve the public interest. And I think he was right to point that out.

Starting point is 00:38:03 Now, look, did it ever get to the point where the government ordered him off the air? No, it didn't need to get to that point because the guy's show was a ratings disaster. Look, even John Stewart, who was a big late-night host at one point, said, let me just read you his quote on, not this topic, but about late-night. He said, being a late-night host is like operating a blockbuster video kiosk, inside a tower records. In other words, the business model is totally obsolete.

Starting point is 00:38:29 And I think that's what's ultimately driving this. Look, we never got to the point where the FCC took an action. And I think if we got to that point, then maybe we debate this issue of what the government should do. But we never got to that point, and I think it's because the affiliates

Starting point is 00:38:42 decided on their own that it was time for Kimmel to go. It's just about your thoughts. It's mostly that. If you just look at the ratings, the reality is that these folks get a lot more intention than they actually

Starting point is 00:38:54 deserve. I mean, it is an anemically sad audience approaching zero. A hundred and sixty thousand people watch Jimmy Kim alive. More people hate stream our show in one day on YouTube. You know what I mean? So it's like, I mean, so what are we talking about here? This is like the pimple of the pimple of the pimple of the pimple of the dog's ass. So I think that people need air cover to make a decision to cancel it today. And the reason why they wanted to cancel it today was if they didn't take this opportunity, they would have had to wait another year or two for his renewal to come up. And so I think that there was a economic motivation that was lingering for a long time before this happened. His show sucks. It's not very good. At a very

Starting point is 00:39:47 basic social, cultural, economic reality, as these numbers demonstrate, many, many, many millions of Americans who had a choice every day to listen to this guy voted with their feet that this show sucked. Let's move on. I will, yeah, say I agree that they made a very simple decision that was economic because these same networks, ABC and CBS, were more than happy when these shows were pulling in serious ratings and serious money back in, you know, three, four, five, years ago, they were doing much better, which shows you how cable has come apart over the last couple of years. In 2022, ABC signed Kimball to three seasons, 45 million, 2023 CBS signed Colbert to a three-year deal. That'll be ending. And as you showed in that chart, it's been plummeting

Starting point is 00:40:41 since then. Quick note, that's just for the very important 18 to 49 demographic. Obviously, they have a bunch of old boomers watching it on their cable channels. That's the discrepancy in those Nobody watches this. But I do have grave concerns over myself personally in what branding cars doing. I don't think the FCC should... He didn't do anything. Well, I can finish my sentence, maybe. Okay.

Starting point is 00:41:05 Or you can just interrupt me every time I start a sentence. We just talked about having civil discourse. Do you want to have civil discourse? You want to just shoot me down. I'm civilly telling you that he didn't do anything in the first sentence. Please go ahead. I do have concerns over both how the administration is doing this. I think it's disgraceful. I didn't like the pressure they put CBS under to get Colbert canceled,

Starting point is 00:41:27 and I don't like the pressure they're putting ABC news under. We should have a tradition of free speech and comedians should be protected even if you don't like what they have to say. This is the exact opposite of what many folks and why they backed this administration was to have less censorship. And we sat here on this program for many years talking about Biden censoring COVID talk and Biden's censoring, social media, having the Twitter files, a direct line in there to cancel this. I think that this is a dark, hold on, let me finish. It's a dark moment for this administration to be so obsessed with trying to silence their critics. And it's not going to work. It's only going to drive them to start podcasts and do more of it. Yes, go ahead. Can I ask your question?

Starting point is 00:42:15 Yeah. Well, first, I make a statement. I think your comments are insane. But here's my question. I think yours are so sticophantic to Trump What did I say? I said he didn't do anything. No, I think you're trying to suck it up to Trump by saying it's a terrible show, he's not funny, none of that matters in terms of freedom of speech. I'm trying to ask you a question.

Starting point is 00:42:32 Do you think, because the government did nothing, let's just be clear, they did nothing. They threatened him. After he was already can't. No, not after. And they shouldn't be doing any pressure. The government should be staying out of it. Okay, let me ask you a question.

Starting point is 00:42:49 Do you think, the people that made the decision to dump Kimmel, what percentage of it do you think was the economic reality of a busted show? And what percentage of it do you think was the impingement of free speech as you characterize it? What percent? How do you waive these two things? Absolutely. I think they would have let both of their contracts run out, renegotiate them for smaller dollar amounts and reset the economics of those shows, if not for the pressure put on them by the 47th administration. I think they would have just rode these shows out till their next contracts went out, and then they would have renegotiated them at much lower amounts.

Starting point is 00:43:27 You think Trump is the reason why Colbert got canceled? What are you talking about? I think that the pressure of having, no, no, it's not a pathology. I think they wanted to get the paramount deal through. No, no, I think getting the Paramount deal through the sale of the Paramount, and I think they've settled a lot of these agreements because they don't want to get caught out. away. That can all be true. Two things can be true at the same time. John Stewart understands the medium and he says it's a blockbuster store. They can't wait to be rid of these guys. These guys are overpaid. They're entitled because they're grossly overpaid. They think they deserve this. By the way, free speech does not mean you have a right to an ABC show. Sorry. You actually have to be talented. You have to be funny. Which none of these guys are anymore. That's the reason they're

Starting point is 00:44:14 getting canceled. Exactly. You know what? They're talking about replacing. replacing Kimmel with. Not another late-night performer. Celebrity Family Feud. They're going to replace it with a game show. That's what they're talking about replacing it with. Great show, by the way. It's a more affordable show. They would not have canceled either of these folks if it wasn't from pressure from the administration. The FCC head basically said, we're going to do this one way or the other. So I believe that this is the kind of thing we don't want to see at the Trump administration, and, by the way, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and I are all in sync on this. We all think that this is a bad look for Trump and the Trump administration. You guys can

Starting point is 00:44:53 disagree, but that's what we do here. We have civil disagreements. Where are all the people who are complaining at this when Gina Carano got fired by Disney? Oh, I absolutely felt that was inappropriate. I think there's cancellation now on both sides. The, and I understand people are very hurt by what happened. Were you cool with Roseanne Barr getting fired? I am against anybody getting canceled for their political beliefs. I was against it when they did it to the right, and I'm against it when they're doing it now to the left. Is that clear?

Starting point is 00:45:21 Let's talk about cancel culture for a second. I actually think that Dave Portnoy had a great take on this. There is a legitimate question here about cancel culture, like should it ever be used, when should it be used? And I think Portnoy made a really good point. He says here, to me, cancel culture is when people go out of the way to dig up old tweets, videos, et cetera, looking for dirt on someone. So in other words, they're going through 10 years.

Starting point is 00:45:43 20-year-old tweets of yours. Maybe they find some joke that was either off-color or in poor taste or maybe it's just something they can spin as being that thing. And it's done in an opposition research type of way, right? They decide they're going to go after you. And so they sort through everything you've ever written. That's cancel culture. Okay. He contrasts that with somebody who is on live TV basically saying something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, and dumb in real time. So in other words, this was not like opposites and research. This was a spontaneous reaction to a deeply offensive and insulting and dishonest and false thing that Jimmy Kimmel said. And he already was on thin ice because his ratings are terrible and his syndicates want to get

Starting point is 00:46:35 rid of him. And like Portnoy says, that is not cancel culture. That is consequences. for your actions. And I think he's right about that. And I am a free speech absolutist. If Jimmy Kimmel wants to create a podcast and say all the types of things he said on ABC, I got no problem. That's his right. He will not be censored.

Starting point is 00:46:52 He can do that. And my view on the whole public interest requirement is what we should do is just auction off all the network spectrum. I think it is a can of worms to basically say to all these broadcast affiliates that we're going to give you all this wonderful free spectrum, but then you've got to uphold the public interest. It's way too debatable what that means. I do think it basically invites challenges to what could be free speech. So I think just get rid of the public spectrum. Just have an auction. And we don't need free public spectrum for broadcasters anymore. I definitely agree with that.

Starting point is 00:47:26 In the era of the internet, you do not need public spectrum anymore. I think that that solution has a lot of positives beyond this issue. I think that that should happen. It's the use of that spectrum anyway. Just to go back to this idea, look, if someone in real time is advocating for the murder of someone for their political views or for any reason, maybe that does justify a spontaneous outpouring where it should be reported to their employer, hey, this person is saying this thing. If they're dancing on the grave of someone, if they're praising that act of murder, you know, I have to say that, again, I have a minimum standard of decency for civil society, and that minimum standard of decency,

Starting point is 00:48:10 is an unwillingness to engage in political violence or to celebrate political violence when somebody engages in it. Because otherwise, we're down the path of civil war. I think we all understand that. So I have to say that if someone's going to advocate for these views, I'm okay with there being a spontaneous reaction of people complaining about it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:32 And if that means that Jimmy Kimmel does a podcast instead of an ABC show in prime time, I'm okay with that. I think, you know, the issue I have with any of these cancellations is when the president is asking the networks to cancel people during his, you know, 17 time a day press conference and working with the gaggle, he's literally telling them fire the last two. And then the FCC chair is telling them to fire them and that they'll figure out a way to do it. That to me is the height of putting pressure on these companies. And I think it's abhorrent. Okay. That's just my personal belief.

Starting point is 00:49:06 You guys don't have to agree with it in this civil, civil debate we're having here. Let's talk about Larry and David Ellison. They're making massive media moves both in legacy and social media. Let's talk about the legacy stuff first. Paramount Skydance merger is basically a month old. And already, CEO David Ellison, that's Larry Ellison's son, is looking to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. As you probably know, they're run by David Zazlov. They own CNN, HBO, DC Comics, Discovery, a bunch of other brands.

Starting point is 00:49:35 and that would put the Ellison's in charge of not just CBS News, which owns 60 Minutes. They would also own CNN. As everybody knows, Larry Ellison, big GOP donor in the past. And there also are reports, interestingly, that David Ellison wants to buy the free press from Bart Weiss for $200 million and put her in charge of CBS in 60 Minutes. That would be seismic in the news business. If you put those assets together, $200 million paid subs, HBO Discovery, 120 million paid subs right now. CBS reaches 80 million paid with Paramount Plus. And the free press is

Starting point is 00:50:12 obviously niche and brand new. But they're growing. You've got 136,000 paid subscribers and almost a million followers across their social media. The second piece to this puzzle that's super interesting is social media. Oracle is now the heavy favorite to acquire TikTok. And Trump said that was going to happen as part of the U.S. and China negotiations that are ongoing for trade. So what are your thoughts here, Friedberg? You wanted to talk about this is an interesting collection of assets coming under the Ellison umbrella. Is this strategic? Is this vanity? Is it a nepo baby with a huge, you know, blind checkbook? What are we seeing here? And what do you think? I mean, what do you do when you're worth a couple hundred billion dollars

Starting point is 00:50:57 and you're 81 years old and you're thinking about what legacy you want to leave behind, except to perhaps empower your kid to build the largest, most influential media company in history. And I think that's the story that's unfolding in front of us, not to mention, I think that the TikTok deal and Ellison's role in TikTok is going to be instrumental in realizing potential future distribution. So if you think about the way media has evolved, it used to be kind of centralized studio-based production models, the old Paramount, the old Warner Brothers, et cetera. and then there's been a lot of streamers that have come on that started to syndicate that content and contract for production of content like Netflix and obviously Paramount Plus and HBO Macs

Starting point is 00:51:40 have their own streaming services to deliver their own content. But at the end of the day, there's kind of two big behemoths that each come at it from a different place. One is YouTube and the other one is Netflix. Netflix has historically been in the kind of scripted production

Starting point is 00:51:54 or contracted production side and YouTube in the social production side. The alternative to that, might be this consolidated merger and TikTok. And now Larry Ellison's going to have a hand in both. And so there may be, and I do think that there's going to be this convergence between this kind of socially generated content platform like a YouTube, like a TikTok, and the high value produced content like the studios like Netflix has been doing.

Starting point is 00:52:18 And the reason is Netflix has had to compress margins on the content creators. And we talked about this at our summit last week, where a lot of the creators, now that went to Netflix to get good deals or went to Amazon, they're all finding that the budgets are getting cut and that the only way these folks are going to get paid is like cost of production plus 10% with cost of production getting squeezed and budgets getting squeezed by Netflix. So as a creator, you may actually make more money by taking your content to a bigger audience with sponsors or advertisers on YouTube. And so a lot of big time creators, by the way, the audience at YouTube is over 10x bigger than it is.

Starting point is 00:52:59 on Netflix. So Netflix is only paying to retain subscribers now. You know, subscriber growth is kind of slow down a bit. At the end of the day, Netflix is just spending money on content to keep people on the platform. So if you take the incredibly rich content and production capabilities of HBO and all the Warner Brother discovering media properties and production houses underneath this combined company, and you combine that with the direct-to-consumer distribution of TikTok, there may in the future be a merger between this media company and TikTok or a deep commercial relationship or imagine going on TikTok and you can now get premium content for 10 bucks a month or two bucks an episode and watch all of your HBO shows in the

Starting point is 00:53:42 TikTok app or watch all of the discovery shows or all of the other content that's available. So I do think that the distribution that has been delivered by this kind of social media model like YouTube and TikTok, combined with the premium model, may end up creating a real category killer that can challenge both YouTube and Netflix. And so I would kind of look at this story as like a beginning of an unfolding of something that may rewrite the entire media landscape.

Starting point is 00:54:07 I mean, when you look back on it, Freiburg, Katzenberg was maybe ahead of his time with Quibi. He wanted to try to make this bridge between the two. And he just might have been too early or just didn't execute. Well, think about the network effects. What made TikTok so big what made YouTube so big is the long tail of user-generated content, and that's what drove the audience, and that's what built the platform.

Starting point is 00:54:30 And mainstream, right? And, yeah, well, then you can do the premium stuff on top of it. Yeah. But when you try and create premium content in a small way like Katzenberg tried to do, it's very hard to build the audience to make the economics make sense. And the economics are really challenging already with premium content in the big players, as you can see with Netflix. They're compressing budgets.

Starting point is 00:54:50 So I would argue that you really need to. have them both to make the model work now because the audience is so attuned to user-generated content. Here's what our partner, Polymarket, shout out to my guy, Shane, 84% Larry Ellison or Oracle, kind of the same thing here. They put a slash, acquire TikTok. That's up over 20 percentage points in the last couple of days. What do you think all this means, the divestiture of TikTok, Larry Ellison getting it as opposed to Google, Apple, Microsoft? There were so many people, maybe even Elon who might have wanted TikTok. What do you think of this divestiture?

Starting point is 00:55:26 And then our government gets the golden vote now. I understand that the U.S. government will have a seat on the board of TikTok. So the Chinese have given it up, except for the algorithm. What do you think? Remember, it's TikTok, it's TikTok U.S. It's only 5% of the overall, it's only 5% to 8% of the overall TikTok business. So TikTok U.S. is what's being spun out. Yes, correct.

Starting point is 00:55:48 Chmoth, what do you think here? I think there's two things that are important. The first is that in the future, and this may sound very dystopian, but he who controls the algorithm will control what people think. And if you think about it in that context, you need, as you've said before, a marketplace of very different approaches and algorithms that are essentially fighting for mindshare. If you don't have that, you'll have a massive zombie group think culture. So from that perspective, you have to put TikTok into the hands of a completely different owner than any of these other social media sites so that they are motivated to compete against each other.

Starting point is 00:56:31 That's one. The second thing is there's been a lot that has been said about the TikTok algorithm called monolith. And a bunch of it has been already put out openly and TikTok was very transparent and they published a paper. You can find it on archive. You can show the link to it, Nick, maybe in the show notes. but it's an incredible paper that describes a very simplistic approach to essentially moving people

Starting point is 00:56:54 into different directions of thought. So if you put all of these ideas together, I think where we are, maybe all the way coming back to where we started this discussion about Charlie Kirk, it is increasingly important to make sure that the overwhelming majority

Starting point is 00:57:13 of how people get ideas is understood by the rest of the people. Because if you start to go down these rabbit holes in ways that are algorithmically programmed, in models that you don't understand that then push you into extremism, you will end up in a very, very, very bad place, as will society. And then the outcomes of that are completely avoidable as we're seeing. Yes. So I think that the TikTok thing is going to be one of these important moments where we shine a light on the importance of these algorithms. it's poorly understood.

Starting point is 00:57:47 It's not well talked about. But I think what the Trump administration doing is important to keep it away from everybody else so that there's more competition. Yeah, I'm going to strongly agree. I think the Trump administration did a great job on this one, just calling balls and strikes of not making sure meta got it or somebody who has already a lot of algorithm, the control over what society's seeing. And back to the algorithm.

Starting point is 00:58:11 Just on this, you know, I give a lot of credit to Elon too, because his algorithm is open source. We know what's happening there. He just did it two weeks ago, yeah. If that's open source and monolith is open source, then I think the next big question we have to ask is, what is going on in Reddit? What is going on in meta?

Starting point is 00:58:30 How are we guiding and shaping people? Why does YouTube sometimes, for example, like our Tulsi Gabbard video, is apparently deemed to risk A and adult content? Who decided that? How did that happen? An algorithm, yeah, not any human. And, you know, the thing I think is important to start thinking about here is, as an industry, we're going to either need to regulate this ourselves or be regulated.

Starting point is 00:58:53 I think that there should be regulation, and I'm not like super fan of regulation, that algorithms must be disclosed and you must have the option given to you up front to switch your algorithm. There should be a B-Y-O-A. Bring your own algorithm. There should be an algorithm store. And I talk to Elon about this publicly on X many times. If you could say, I want one that just gives me a chronological feat. I want one that is from the highest quality sources. And then you should be required to show what the default algorithm is doing. And if you don't do that, I think you should lose your section 230 because an algorithm is more powerful than an editor at the New York Times or an editor at HBO or Netflix deciding what we see, deciding what goes on the home page. The algorithm is a black box and who knows who's controlling it. And then what happens in society

Starting point is 00:59:44 when young men are pushed towards more and more fringe content, more and more dark content, why not just have all the be transparent? Why not let people see? Unfortunately, they don't need to be pushed to fringe content. All they need to do is go to a school where the woke curriculum has been mainstream. And Randy Weingarten's foot soldiers are saying that conservatives are fascists. So you're acting like you've got to go through some weird rabbit hole to imbibe these ideologies when all you have to do is attend a public school and probably a lot of private ones too. I think Dalton's probably the worst. So again, you're acting like the radicalizations coming from the fringes. I think what's so concerning about where we are as a society is

Starting point is 01:00:28 the radicalization's coming from our institutions or a lot of these institutions. You're not going to get an argument to me. I think these schools should be teaching, you know, basic skills, and they should not be involved in the culture wars in any way. I don't think any parent is setting their kids there, and if you are a parent and you're in California, I would encourage you to figure out what they're teaching your kids. And here in the great state of Texas, it's quite... Totally agree. But hey, can I... Can I ask someone said that? And it's quite different here in the great state of Texas, I can tell you, having lived in both places with three kids. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. And look, that's why a lot of people move to

Starting point is 01:01:06 red states because they care about that. So, But hey, did someone mention that our Tulsi video from Allens Summit has been partially censored on YouTube? So what happened is I was at my office yesterday and I open up our YouTube channel because Nick had sent out a link that's something new had posted. So I went to go see what had posted that day. So I pull it up and I saw the Summit videos and I saw that Tulsi wasn't there. I'm like, wait, didn't we post Tulsi? And I looked for it. I couldn't find it.

Starting point is 01:01:33 So I text Nick and he says, it is there. And then I clicked on the thing and it said, safe search. is on. What does that mean? I searched. And apparently, if your network administrator on your enterprise, because I was at my office, we had like our network set, restricted mode, it's called. In restricted mode, people can't like look at adult content on the network and that kind of stuff. And when you have restricted mode on, YouTube turns off anything that would fall under mature audiences. So here it is, activate restricted mode. So it prevents others. That's a huge number of people. That's a huge number of people. Yeah. So basically, this would be,

Starting point is 01:02:08 This would have been the second most viewed video, I'll guarantee you, after the Elon video. And maybe the most viewed. And I was shocked. I said, how is it possible that this video is struggling to be in the top half? And this is why. And you can't even see it. So when you open up, well, it's unclear. So certain videos then get tagged as being for mature audiences.

Starting point is 01:02:32 And they don't show up in restricted mode by the algorithm on YouTube. Oh, so it's the algorithm did it again. It wasn't people reporting it. I'll give you guys my theory. My theory is because the term Russiagate comes up and those sorts of terms. And I think those terms are triggers, if they're in the transcript, they're triggers to be under kind of safe mode. She's debunking Russia Gate. Right.

Starting point is 01:02:52 But I don't do the algorithm. Do you think if it was a video espousing and promoting the Russia Gate hoax that it would have gotten censored this way? It's a good question. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, we can test that by looking for other people discussing it. I mean, you mentioned Scott Adams early. who talks about it 17 times an episode.

Starting point is 01:03:09 By the way, this is a government official in the White House who is the director of national intelligence, who is providing an interview on national intelligence and is being filtered out as being for adults only. Very weird. This is insane. It's insane. This is like when Trump as the sitting president got banned from social media. I mean, you're right.

Starting point is 01:03:29 This is a public official describing intelligence. An investigation. No, an investigation. Reading, reading out an investigation. Their investigation. Putting aside the topic, it's a discussion. Who on earth would think that this is something that people shouldn't consume? Why is this being flagged?

Starting point is 01:03:48 Adult. What's adult about it in any way? It makes no sense. Or for mature audience, yeah, some definition around it. But I think that there's some keywords that triggered it. Without acknowledging or recognizing the algorithm, this is one of the points Chimap was making, we don't know how the algorithms work because the algorithms, cannot determine that this is a, clearly, cannot determine that this is an actual government official

Starting point is 01:04:09 and therefore should not be restricting access to the content. I don't know, man. AI's gotten a lot better in the last year. It seems like this would be an easy, right, instruction effects. Yeah, here's what YouTube says about their filter. This helps hide potentially mature videos. No filter is 100% accurate. No shit.

Starting point is 01:04:28 I wonder if it's also people. Here's the question is, with respect to the error rate, what percent of those videos are conservative versus liberal in their ideological Benzs. Bernie Sanders and Mondami getting the same treatment. If conservative content and liberal content are both subject to

Starting point is 01:04:45 the same error rate, then you know, they haven't liked to stand on maybe. I still don't think they should be doing this, by the way. I mean, look, potentially mature videos should be about... I just want to add one technical thing here, and then I'll go to Jemot. This could also be caused, I know in the past, by people reporting stuff they don't like,

Starting point is 01:05:02 So people would do this report bombing, you know, get 20 different people in a, you know, signal group or in a Discord group to go report this from different IP addresses and file the reports to then silence speech. So that happens too. Did Tucker and Cuban also get censored? That's a debate. I don't understand. Wait, what happened with that? Anyway, Neil, can you check this out and report back to this? We need customer support here.

Starting point is 01:05:27 Go ahead, Chimoff. You had something to end. The Tucker Cuban debate was a perfect example of civil discipline. scores. Yeah, there was a hug. I think this is an example. There was a famous media theorist. His name is Marshall McLuhan. And he had this quote, which is the medium is the message, right? And what did he mean by that? He meant that the characteristics of the medium itself, meaning the way information is delivered, has a greater impact on society and individuals than the actual content of the message. What he's foreshadowing is the importance of these algorithms and these decisions

Starting point is 01:06:04 that happen in the shadows. Because the weight of those decisions have all of these downstream impacts. This is why they should be. Why can't I see my YouTube algorithm? I can confirm that Tucker and Mark Cuban also get filtered. This is insane. Well, basically, because Tucker's, so Tucker and Tulsa are getting filtered. All right. Listen, great. A segue here because we didn't get to recap the summit. And we had, quite paradoxically, we had a real discussion about the importance of debate, friendship, and, you know, the process we try to do here and at the summit, which is let a lot of people speak and debate important issues of which the Tulsi and the college university heads discussions. So many of these were important discussions, but people didn't see our recap, but just

Starting point is 01:06:53 going around the horn here, great moments you felt were. important or enlightening to you. Chimot, did you have a moment at the summit that, you know, one of your amazing insights that you felt were particularly insightful that you want to share with the audience amongst your insights? I think the most important conversation there was the one with Tulsi. I really do. I mean, I think at a very basic level, why does America go to war? Why do we fight wars? Why are men and women being killed? why and it's the same thing with charlie kirk i just get so agitated with this idea that a human being believes that they have the judgment to take somebody else's life to me is incomprehensible

Starting point is 01:07:44 it's just so wrong it's so immoral it's just so wrong and what she talked about and what she's exposing is the cascade of lies that causes an entire generation to lose tens of thousands of of their brothers and sisters, to lose your son and your daughter. So, yeah, it's, that was the most important conversation we had by a country mile. Freeberg, you have a moment for you. That was either entertaining, enlightening, or important. I'll let you take any angle on it. I would recount our wrap-up that we did at the end of day two.

Starting point is 01:08:24 When we first started planning the content for the summit this year, I was actually thinking about trying to get a bunch of American speakers for day one and then a bunch of international speakers for day two, where we could kind of contrast the American perspective from the global perspective. And here, how does the rest of the world view the world and view America? And how does America view America and view the world? And it was hard to kind of get the scheduling right. So the way things kind of ended up getting scheduled out,

Starting point is 01:08:54 we tried to cluster the conversations into different themes, but I didn't feel like we were going to get the orientation I was hoping for, and so we ended up having just a bunch of conversations. But what was really powerful for me was that the similarity we saw with Elon, with Tucker and Mark Cuban, with Alex Karp, we brought it up, I think, also with Eric Schmidt, is this idea that much of what we see in terms of the evolution of society in the West can be viewed through a lens of suicide.

Starting point is 01:09:26 that the West may be committing suicide financially in our deficit spending in terms of birth rate decline. So we're kind of destroying our dollar. We're destroying our headcount because of the birth rate decline. And then this immigration policy issue where we're potentially destroying cultures, which was a topic that came up a few times. And perhaps even thinking about the Tulsi comments, destroying ourselves by thrusting ourselves into war and chopping our heads off. And And then we heard a lot of optimism. We heard a lot of technologists. We heard a lot of folks talk about the options and the choice we have and that we have a choice to kind of reverse these trends and kind of change how we're behaving as a society. And so it all keep together

Starting point is 01:10:10 as one long string. And we ended it with this idea that there's choice. And you have a choice to kind of go forward or you have a choice to commit suicide. And then what really hit me was then we walk out and then the Charlie Kirk murder happened. And so it created this emotional rapper for me on the conversations we had that there were a lot of people that are going to make different choices. And so I just wish we could do a summary of what it was like at the summit instead of each one of these talks standing on their own. They work well on their own. But I think that that whole kind of set of conversations leading to that point of view was really important and poignant for me. Did we end up publishing our final like wrap up conversation?

Starting point is 01:10:47 I want to. We have not done it. What I want to do is I want to do that with the summary video at the end of the summary video. So I want to be like, here's a couple of key points from the talks. Once we get all the talks out, and then our wrap-up conversation, which I think we should do. Sacks, you were incredibly engaged in the summit. You showed up. You were engaged. Were there moments that you found particularly enlightening, inspiring fun for you? Oh my gosh. We just found out that the carp interview has also been censored on safe mode on YouTube. So, wait, basically, the three talks were Tucker, Tulsi, and Karp, which, by the way, I think if you had the audience vote on what the most engaging and interesting talks were.

Starting point is 01:11:33 Those were the three best. Those were up there. And by the way, there were a lot of other really good ones. But those ones, I think, were the most captivating. I think the audience you could see was like really engross. Animated. It could be because of Jason's point, which is that if enough people click, report an issue, it gets put into that part of the algorithm. Yeah, we've got to have to give a little grace Danielle here.

Starting point is 01:11:52 Oh, so who's the one who's doing all the reporting here? Who's weaponizing the YouTube reporting system? It's a bunch of tolerant liberals. It could be Putin. You never know. Sachs, you have moments. We don't need the Russians doing this to us when we're doing it to ourselves. There could be a cobbl that is we could be inflecting this on ourselves.

Starting point is 01:12:12 I agree with Freeberg's wrap about. I thought it was remarkable how the whole thing kind of came together at the end. And there seemed to be a really stark choice. I agree that the next day Charlie was assassinated. And, I mean, I stopped thinking about the summit, but I agree that it really did play into this idea of the suicide of the West. And in the sense that, like we talked about, there apparently are a large contingent of people who don't believe in what I would consider to be the central virtue or tenet of Western civilization, which was expressed, or at least it's attributed to Voltaire. What Voltaire said is, I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. I think that is the central tenant behind Western civilization, because out of that came the right to free expression, to freedom of religion.

Starting point is 01:13:04 Out of that core principle came all the other principles, all the other key freedoms, the right to think and believe and worship as you please, freedom of religion, freedom of the speech, freedom of the press. it all comes out of that. And what you have here is people like Tyler Robinson or the people who were celebrated what he did is the exact opposite. It's, I disapprove of what you say and I will murder you to prevent your right to say it. That is the antithesis. It's the antithesis and it's not Western civilization. It's something different and destructive.

Starting point is 01:13:38 And where it will lead to is a civil war that none of us should want on either side of the political spectrum. One thing I would just like to say, and then Jason, I'd love to hear what you think about this, but one of the most powerful things that I think Charlie got absolutely and precisely right was the plight of young people, meaning the malaise and the anxiety and what was at the root cause of it. At the root cause in the way people think and now in the way people act is economic instability. And that was a thing that I think also came out at the summit. And Charlie does a really good job of very precisely putting it into a box, what they're going through, the lack of homeownership, the overwhelming and just crushing debt, the failure of the school

Starting point is 01:14:25 system, the inability to find a great job, the hookup culture that takes people away from having a committed relationship, getting married, having children. There's a totality of issues that are really cultural, and I would just encourage people to go and find this out because I think at the root cause of all of this is that. I think that we need to sort of find a way to give folks a chance to believe in something. And if you don't, I think the algorithm will take you to a very bad place. So I was absolutely delighted. Great job, Freeberg, and to the team, John and Kimber and Nick,

Starting point is 01:15:01 and just so many people put so much work into that. It was amazing to see us double the size of it while increasing the quality of it from the speakers to the experience and everything. I heard the food was excellent. No lines. I mean, all that logistical stuff was just so dialed in in year four. So I give a lot of credit to our amazing team. I have to thank our sponsors.

Starting point is 01:15:19 They did an amazing job of making this summit available to so many people. We can do the scholarships and have so many people involved. And there are three very special partners who did insane buildouts at the show. Salana, our friends over there went crazy. They did the entire upstairs. I don't know if you hung out there. But I was at their coffee bar. And they had a juice bar.

Starting point is 01:15:38 IPO themed bar. It was just awesome. It was awesome. They hosted two of the dinners, too, the public market and geopolitical dinners. Our friends at OKX, they showed up big for us at the summit. They built out an awesome lounge, modeled after a saloon. I went in there and had a little bourbon myself on Sunday. They screened their first film, mild, mild west. They gave away 250 in Bitcoin to all attendees. And somebody won a hot lap with an F1 driver because they sponsored the McLaren team that was super nice of them, huh? Freebird. Yeah, that was awesome.

Starting point is 01:16:10 And we're going to be at that Formula one event in Vegas in November, which is awesome. Oh, we're going to Vegas? Yum Yaks games. I-Ren is a new partner this year, and they operate all these next-gen data centers. So big shout-out to them for doing the casino night, which was a huge hit at Clifton's. I went to that. I didn't. I was at the other event.

Starting point is 01:16:31 It was insane. I thought it was like the coolest event. Yeah. Look at the pictures there. I actually went to all four parties. on the Monday night. I was completely wiped out. But, man, the casino night was awesome.

Starting point is 01:16:42 It was so fun. You're like Phil Collins, at LiveAge. You went to everything. You slipped around on your Concord, and you went everywhere. That's right. And they had a great engraving station in the Expo Hall.

Starting point is 01:16:54 That packed the event. So just couldn't do it without you guys and gals. And again, without the sponsors, JCal, we would not be able to put this event on because we spent way more than the ticket revenue. And we would not be able to have the scumeration scholarship tickets, which I think are really important. I remember in my early career, like, I couldn't afford to go to a fancy event. And I think the scholarship just opens us off.

Starting point is 01:17:16 And you guys debated me about the scholarships for the first couple of years. And now you realize, it's great. It's great to have that young energy, right? Yeah. Sometimes Jake gets something right. I really enjoyed having Josai there and talking about the China and America relationship, not being one in which, you know, we have to go down a prescribed route that there could be off-ramps and there could be collaboration there. I thought, Neil, from YouTube, despite what we're talking about here today. I appreciate him coming and engaging us with the censorship issue. He got into it with USACs, and I thought that was very productive.

Starting point is 01:17:47 I love the fact that people from this administration, Pelssey and Chris Wright, they were willing to engage in a vibrant debate. The Dartmouth and the Berkeley discussion on civil discourse is just so important, and they have such an impact on kids' lives when their brains are developing, as we talked about on this show. Rick Caruso on the management of our cities, I think was amazing. And then, you know, Tucker and Karp, they went right to some really hard discussions around anti-Semitism and the situation in Gaza. Also, these are very difficult things to discuss. This event was a celebration of

Starting point is 01:18:23 debating hard topics. And for that, I am very thankful for my friendship with each of you and to have this amazing experience of the online podcast and most of all the community, meeting all of our, I won't call them fans. I think our friends are besties in the audience. And what a great job, Freiburg, in accommodating the scholarships. I know some people get bent out of shape. Oh, you gave somebody a scholarship, whatever. We got a lot of young people in there to experience it as well as the people who could afford the tickets, etc. And I'll say, what a crazy, joyful moment at the end when Diplo played. And I was, we were, three of us were on stage dancing and just celebrating with our kids and I was having another seizure but thanks

Starting point is 01:19:07 yeah thanks for letting me up there for a few minutes you came up for a couple of minutes and enjoyed yourself Rupert but yeah just congratulations to the team it was an amazing effort and what a great dialogue and I think that spirit of dialogue and making a choice to engage the hard topics in a respectful manner at the end of every program Chumont says love you besties and Sacks gives it back at you. But the truth is, even in a contentious debate, you can still remain friends and love each other despite those debates. It's the most important American ideal. It's the most human ideal. And it's, dare I say, you know, I'm not a Catholic anymore, but I remain a Christian is one of the most Christian ideas. And I know that was a major part of his faith was a major

Starting point is 01:19:50 part of Charlie's life and his legacy. And, you know, that had to be personally as well, his Christianity. Even if I disagree with him about, you know, issues and debates, he was a Christian at his core. He cared about other people deeply, and he cared about humanity. So rest and peace. Let me just say, Jekyll, thank you most of all for taking the time to watch all of those Charlie videos. How much time do you say? He was like 40 hours. I watched dozens of hours and 50 videos. Just to make sure I got from first principles, my understanding of who he was.

Starting point is 01:20:28 I disagree with him about gay rights. I disagree with him about, you know, how he said certain things. But there was nothing I saw in there that could even come close to justifying anything that would be anywhere near violence. Well, in any event, I appreciate that you took the time to watch Charlie for yourself.

Starting point is 01:20:50 as opposed to listening to the mainstream media's mischaracterizations of him, which are attempts to either downplay or minimize or even to some degree justify what happened. And by doing that, J-Cal, I think you really honored our friend Charlie. So thank you for that. All right. Rest in peace, Charlie, Kirk, and love to his family and his friends. By the way, there was an incredible video that he did where somebody said something along the lines of define what it means to be a concern.

Starting point is 01:21:20 And he said, you know, sometimes people think that what that means is to like limit rights or whatever. And he said, that's not what it means. It's just that I believe that I would like to conserve and honor a specific way of life that has existed in the past. And he talked about it, you know, where you could go get a job, you could do better than your parents, you get married, you have kids, everybody's safe. I mean, and it kind of shocked me because I thought, wow, that definition is actually what many, many, many people believe, even if they don't believe that they are a conservative because a lot of people believe that, you know,

Starting point is 01:21:59 and this is not taking away from other people, but that's what we'd want for a lot of us, for our kids. Let's all set an example here. Have vibrant debate and love your besties, okay? And we'll see you all next time. Love you, boys. Love you best, bye-bye. So back at you.

Starting point is 01:22:18 No, back at you. We miss the back. at you. Back at you.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Charlie Kirk Murder, Assassination Culture in America, Jimmy Kimmel Suspended, Ellison Media Empire

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