All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E155: In conversation with Tucker Carlson, plus OpenAI chaos explained

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is Sax's big day. There he is. Oh, there's talk. Oh, look at the smile on Sax's face. This is the greatest day in the history of the All in the Heart. Look at how happy Sax is. Oh. Oh.

Starting point is 00:00:13 Sax! By the way, I'm not ashamed of that. You're not super-mine, I'm honored. Oh, whoa! Sax! You're getting it. You got it quickly. How threatened do you feel right now?

Starting point is 00:00:26 This is the highest rated hosting in cable history. This is the world's true greatest moderator. Exactly, no doubt, no doubt. Absolutely. Where is this in relation to your marriage and the birth of your children? Don't ask. That's right up there.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Up there. He's like, what children? It is for me. No, no, no. What? What? What your winner's ride? like what children it is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me.

Starting point is 00:00:46 It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me.

Starting point is 00:00:54 It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me.

Starting point is 00:01:02 It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me. got an amazing guest for you today here on the all in high class sex is dream has come true Tucker cost is with us today you know Tucker he was the number one TV host for much of the past decade including last year when shockingly it was fired from Fox News on April 24th reason for the firing. It's never been pinned down but we'll get into it today. And we're going to find out what is motivating a post Fox News Tucker, who has obviously launched a show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He's done 42 episodes, accounting. He's had everybody from Donald Trump and

Starting point is 00:01:39 Ritate, they've portnied and the newly elected president of Argentina on the program. So welcome to the all-in podcast Tucker Carson. Thank you for having me. It is, it is a legit honor to be here. Two part question to kick us off here. First, have you figured out why you were fired from Fox and let's get into that a bit? And second, given that you were the number one host for much of the past decade, and I think probably in the top five highest paid of all time, what's motivating you now?

Starting point is 00:02:14 What's the mission here as an independent journalist? Take those two questions in whichever order you like. I don't know why I was fired. I mean, it kind of isn't an agatha Christie story. There are like so many suspects, you know what I mean? But I don't know why I was fired. I mean, it kind of is an agathic Christie story. There are like so many suspects, you know what I mean? But I don't know I was never told like an only speculate. There are a lot of different things going on. I had a lot of opinions that were unpopular,

Starting point is 00:02:34 you know, with people who might have influenced my show getting canceled. So I really don't know. I will say, you know, right after it happened, people said, well, how can they fire the top guy? Because that's what it is. I'm certainly not the first high rated host to get fired. It's not only about ratings.

Starting point is 00:02:53 There are a lot of different factors. It's a big company you all have worked for and run big companies, and you know, there's a lot of complicated stuff going on. And it's never exactly clear why things happen the the way they do but I was not shocked by it I mean I was shocked by it in a short term sense. I didn't expect to have my show canceled that morning but But I was not shocked at all When I thought about it for a minute, I'd expected that you know you can't kind of give the finger to everybody

Starting point is 00:03:21 And persist in a in a corporate job So I know hard feelings and I, and I, in fact, I said that on the call when I received the news. It's not my company. And I never felt like I had a right to be on the air. I was, I was working at the pleasure of the family that runs the company who treated me very well

Starting point is 00:03:37 and, and they wanted me off. And so I was off. Did you ever have moments where somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, Advertiser XYZ is getting uncomfortable or we're trying to land this new advertiser and they want you to shape things in one way. Did you ever feel that pressure? Is that, or is that just a thing that is kind of like a boogie man that doesn't actually exist? Oh, well, it not only exists, it defines news coverage, especially on pharma.

Starting point is 00:04:04 You know, because pharma is the biggest advertiser intelligent is and you know and so for sure i mean if you know fizer sponsoring your show you're not going to question the facts i mean it's kind of that simple uh... so absolutely and of course that's why they're the biggest advertiser so they can shape news coverage i mean that's that's the point but uh... i personally never had a single person say to me, don't say this, that I recall,

Starting point is 00:04:26 I haven't thought about it too much, but that certainly, I was there 14 years, and I didn't have that experience regularly, or at all, really, that I can remember. And I think, my producers may have been told that, but it didn't ever get to me, because I was always really clear, which is, I always said, I out loud to the supervisors there, I work

Starting point is 00:04:47 for your company, I don't own this network, all I can control is what I say, if you don't like what I say, don't have me on TV. But as long as I'm on TV, I'm going to say what I think is true. And a million cases, I said only part of what I think, not because of my employer, but just because you shouldn't actually say everything you think. I mean, I have some crackpot views too, or I have resentments that I didn't want to work out on the air. I mean, you're straining yourself and you walk too, as you do in your personal life.

Starting point is 00:05:14 But on no question of principle, did I ever pull back because I just, I wouldn't do that. And again, I was just super clear. If you don't like what I'm saying, take me off the air, but I'm not going to, you know, toe-align. I was just super clear. If you don't like what I'm saying, take me off the air, but I'm not going to, you know, toe a line. And because I was so clear about that, I just think they didn't think it was worth having some kind of dispute with me. And to their great credit, for the time that I was there, and I said this many times in public, like I took positions on the Ukraine war, on the COVID vaccine, on the COVID lockdowns,

Starting point is 00:05:42 among other issues that I think, you know, I've been vindicated on pretty conclusively on the origins of COVID. And all of those are super on popular, on January 6th, which was so hated at the company where I worked that people resound a number of people, including on-air people, for that I can think of resigned in protest over my, over me suggesting that actually was more complicated than it looked. And there were a bunch of federal agents in the crowd How can you say that are you claiming a false flag? Well no not

Starting point is 00:06:10 wouldn't use that phrase but like this is something weird going on here well I've been vindicated on that and it sounds like I'm bragging I'm not I'm just stating factually that uh, I said things that were truly hated by a lot of the people who work there and they let me keep saying them So it's kind of hard to complain really at this point right again, it's not my company said things that were truly hated by a lot of the people who worked there and they let me keep saying them. So it's kind of hard to complain really at this point, right? Again, it's not my company. Just from a business standpoint, I think it's weird for a company to fire their top performer and to do so without giving any notes.

Starting point is 00:06:38 I mean, if any of us had a superstar executive or a superstar engineer, like a 100X engineer, working at one of our companies. And like day in and day out, they were hitting every milestone and crushing it. Like if you had a problem with them, you would give them a note. You would just like try to say, hey, can we just like,

Starting point is 00:06:58 it's so, I just think from like a business standpoint, it's so weird. It just seems like self-destructive. And I think it was. I mean, their ratings really cratered in the wake of making this change. Maybe they've come back a little bit, but I don't think it's ever been the same. I just think it's a crazy way to operate a business. So yeah, it's their right. I mean, they can do whatever they want, but

Starting point is 00:07:17 I don't understand it as a way of doing business. Well, I don't understand there's a way of living, either. I mean, you know, everybody in the course of life, whether as a parent or an employer or just a friend, has to deliver uncomfortable news or disagree with someone that you deal with, and you have a moral obligation to explain the disagreement. You can't just levy the penalty and leave it at that. You have to explain why you're doing that. I think that's incumbent on us morally to do that.

Starting point is 00:07:42 I wasn't that mad about it actually because I know the rules of that particular business, which are a really harsh. And I've been in it my whole life. And so I've seen a lot of people as talented or more talented than I meet bad ends. And for reasons that I thought were not justified. And I know them all really well. So you work in a business like that.

Starting point is 00:08:04 You know what it is, you know the black car is gonna show up at 3 a.m. and touch the Lubeonka and that's just what it is. You know what I mean? You can kind of whine about it. Yeah. How much of it was the, you know, this is a family owned business.

Starting point is 00:08:18 And the patriarch, obviously pioneered opinion-based, you know, journalism slash entertainment commentary. And the younger ones maybe were on the other side of the political aisle and maybe were not as, I don't know, cutthroat or maybe didn't share the same philosophy of their dad. What was your relationship like with the new generation, with Rupert, et cetera? And how much did that play into it, do you think? Well, my relationship with the father and son who were directly involved in that company was from my perspective very strong.

Starting point is 00:08:53 And I will say this about the Murdoch's, they're very polite. I mean, they're really kind of very Anglo, almost a labyrinately polite in a way that I'm not mocking I'm complimenting and that they're not confrontational they're not nasty in the way that they deal with people directly and and I prefer that as sort of a way of communicating with people so I got along with them very very well I always liked them and they were very nice to me elaborately

Starting point is 00:09:19 nice to me and always gave me assurances of my right to say what I thought was true. And so again, I can only speculate. I will say, though, and you see this with Trump, especially, I don't think I'm anywhere near as divisive as Trump. Obviously, I'm not as powerful as Trump. I'm not the figure Trump is. But one thing that maybe Trump, I haven't common is, were really disliked by a certain set of people, you know, affluent people, highly educated people, people work at NGOs, government finance,

Starting point is 00:09:46 really kind of hate a certain brand of politics. So it's not being conservative. You can be conservative in that sort of, I work at Kato or Heritage, we need to get back to free trader, whatever, that kind of thing, the Reaganite forum policy, that's all fine. But if you start asking questions like, well, why doesn't our country act in its own interest? There's something about that that's uniquely offensive to them, to that whole class of people.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Now, I could not have more contempt or loathing for those people having grown up among them. I know how repulsive they are. So, you know, they're hatred of me. I wear as a badge of honor. It actually makes me happy. But it's hard to take. I would say, I mean, again, I'm just speculating in my specific

Starting point is 00:10:25 case, but I know more broadly, like it's very hard to have lunch at the four seasons in Jackson during the winter because there's some private equity wife who's going to scream at you and you're way to the men's room because that world hates you. And so if you live in that world and you're employing someone like me, you know, you hear about it. I guess that's my point. You hear about it. Like what? That guy's a Nazi. Oh, you know, like what's the deal with that? I want to actually pull this thread.

Starting point is 00:10:51 I would love your perspective on the state of American society. Just less on the political spectrum of Republican versus Democrat, but just observe for us Tucker. What do you see in American society? Where are we as a society? What has happened? what is happening well This isn't an eight hour podcast. I could actually give you my very lengthy

Starting point is 00:11:11 Theories and views on that but I will just say one thing that's I've been thinking about a lot recently I just have been at my college roommate staying at my house and You know more of course the same age known each other are whole adult lives He's been very successful and he lives in a you know an enclave of very very successful people and and so we're we're, of course, the same age, knowing each other, our whole adult lives. He's been very successful and he lives in a, you know, an enclave of very, very successful people. And so we're familiar with this culture. And we were talking about American, and he's from an immigrant family. So he's got a kind of broader perspective, I would argue, a broader perspective on America.

Starting point is 00:11:37 He's 54 as I am. And we're talking about how, obviously, this is not a democracy. It's not even a sort of decent facsimile of a democracy, it's to call it a democracy, it's ridiculous, actually. But it's even worse than that. Our politics, and not just our politics, but our public conversation reflects the very specific and pro-ocial concerns of a tiny, tiny group of people, which is middle-aged, affluent women who tend to be very angry and tend to, mostly with their husbands, but probably for other reasons too, and exercise

Starting point is 00:12:14 this wildly disproportionate power over what we can talk about and think about and the rules that the rest of us live by, it's just kind of amazing. And he happens to live in Jackson, Wyoming. So, and I go there, you know, Tuskegee into fish. And I have for a very long time. And I always say to him, I can't go anymore because I yelled at at lunch over my elk chile, or in the lifeline, or whatever,

Starting point is 00:12:38 or at the, you know, West Side Market, literally a relative of mine yelled at me while buying bananas in the West Side Market she lives there. And I'm thinking, what is it about this group of people that hates me so much when, again, I know them really well. I'm related in some cases to them. So, and I'm not quite sure, but I just, I see our politics and our concerns, which,

Starting point is 00:13:01 if you take three steps back or like insanely picky, you know, like trans black lives matter. Well, I never said they didn't, but like if that's your main public policy objective to celebrate trans black lives in a country of 360 million people, it's got a lot of big problems. You are not seeing the whole picture. So like, what is that? And what it is, again, is the disproportionate influence of a class of people and their

Starting point is 00:13:27 neuroses, I wouldn't even say policy concerns, but like they're things they're worried about and they're weird personal ticks and like the result of years of therapy and SSRIs on their brains, like that kind of controls our whole conversation. And my friend was saying, because he's really smart, he's like, yeah, but the good news is this can't last because it's just too stupid. And at some point very soon, the country is going to revert to the place that all countries begin, which is in a conversation about things that matter. Like, who comprises the population? Do we have enough water?

Starting point is 00:13:59 Where are we on energy exactly? How are we going to manage these complex relationships with other countries? Like the things that, you know, the stuff of government, the stuff of resources. Well, of course, resources, but like just the basic questions that should dominate the consciousness of any country and should dominate our public conversation. It's like, are public obsessions are getting increasingly irrelevant? Actually. Increasingly, it's like crazy.

Starting point is 00:14:23 Um, the conversation becomes more en name as the palms get bigger. Thank you. Exactly. So when you look at that, that cohort's disproportionate impact and then you translate it for example last night, there was a, I guess like a almost riot protest when folks are trying to light the Christmas tree in Rockefeller center, I guess, and there was like a huge pro-Hamas, I think somebody checked me if that's as wrong, protest, and then people were pushing back on the cops and all of this stuff, and all these folks are trying to do was just like the Christmas tree. Can you connect the dots? How does that cohort get to?

Starting point is 00:15:01 No, but it's actually a branch from the same tree, Christmas tree in this case, because that whole conversation, well, I think it's interesting and I think it's geopolitically significant and I've been to those countries and I know people there, so I'm interested in it. And there's a lot to care about and be interested in. But the displacement of all of our public passions onto a conflict in a foreign country, however important that conflict may be, really kind of tells you a lot. It's like, in other words, yeah, I care what's happening between Israel and Hamas.

Starting point is 00:15:35 I have views on it, which are probably pretty mainstream views, whatever. I don't have any very interesting views on it. But it's a little weird for your entire country, thousands of miles away to be so preoccupied with that conflict that they miss big history-changing events happening in their own country. And I think that's again a species of the same problem. We are unable to... The problems that can front us are so big that we can't deal with them. And actually my wife and I had this conversation the other night, I was for years a magazine writer

Starting point is 00:16:04 and I have to file every Friday. I worked for Bill Crystal at the weekly standard. And obviously, I regret that. But it was interesting at the time. And I have to file the story every week. And I'd stamp all night because I'm very lazy and I put stuff off. And I'd stamp every Thursday night all night. And my editor would call, it's going to the printing press in Pennsylvania. This was back when it was in print. And you've got to file it. And right around 8.30 a.m. on Friday morning, I would have this overwhelming urge to rearrange the books on my shelves in my library by title or by subject.

Starting point is 00:16:34 I'd like to have all these weird kind of like librarian fantasies about rearranging books, which in a normal day, like, why would you do that? Better things to do, but as my problems mounted, and I couldn't write the lead I wanted, I would transfer all my anxiety onto something I felt like a control or there was a lower stakes, less consequence. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing a little bit. We care more about foreign wars and trans lives as the obvious things that hold our society together start to fall apart.

Starting point is 00:17:06 Because like, how do we even deal with that? I don't know if I'm being very articulate, but I think that's what's perfect. Makes sense. What do you put on the top of that list of things we should be focused on, Tucker? Oh, I mean, but from my perspective, by far the most important. One, two, three, this is what America needs to put its energy on. It's not even close. It's national cohesion.

Starting point is 00:17:25 And by which I mean something specific, what does the majority of the country have in common with one another? Because look, if the arc of the last century's, American history is super, super interesting. So you have this massive influx of immigration, you know, the Ellis Island generation, late 18th, early 20th century. And it's both good and bad. We only remember the good, but there was a lot of social volatility, like a lot. Like the mayor of Chicago got shot in his house. There was bombings on Wall Street.

Starting point is 00:17:56 Like the whole, the wobbly is the anarchists. Like the foot soldiers that were immigrants, working class European immigrants. And part of the problem was there was just a lot of immigrants and I mean, Sako and Vanzetti you know, who shot the, shot the clerk in, was it Brockton mass? Anyway, it was in mass as I Boston. They had been in the country for just a few years and they immediately got sucked into radical politics. Well, why was that?

Starting point is 00:18:21 Well, because they weren't kind of bought in or rooted in or hadn't been fully assimilated into American society. So then you have the first world war, and we basically shut down immigration, and we have this period of settling where like all Americans, let's think through our civic religion, what ties us together, and then that leads into October of 29, and you do have this national crisis that lasts for more than a decade, and we didn't blow up. And we had a successful, you know, the CCC. We like had these big programs, which I'll say this is a conservative kind of worked in

Starting point is 00:18:49 keeping people fed and focused, gave them purpose, kept the country from collapsing during the Great Depression. If that happened now, when there is no broad agreement on what it means to be an American, no agreement at all on what we all have in common. I don't think we can withstand it, actually. I really don't. And I'm not even convinced it matters as much what that civic religion is as it does that we have one. If we don't have anything that ties us together

Starting point is 00:19:16 when that day comes, and you know what I mean, when the economic crisis comes, because it's coming, like, what's that gonna look like? It's gonna be very scary. And so that's what I'm most worried about by far. How do you define national cohesion, I guess, maybe then? Like what are the few elements that you think America needs to agree on as a majority? Wake me up from a deep sleep and ask me what it means to be an American.

Starting point is 00:19:40 Okay. And then do the same to a thousand other people and we'll just do a survey on it. And do the majority of those people give the same answer. And if they don't, like, so this is, okay, this, I mean, I have so many theories, God, I'm gonna control myself, but I would just say one other thing, which is we overestimate people's ability

Starting point is 00:19:58 to metabolize change. It's, you know, I'm not like a strict Darwinist or anything, but I do sort of believe that over time people adapt to their environment and that, you know, in us is, you know, most of our abilities are inborn. Like, that's just true, sorry. I have dogs. I know that. And people just haven't, you know, the world didn't change that much from, you know, for 60 or whatever, the sacking of Rome until the Renaissance just didn't. And then the Industrial Revolution to now has been like such massive change that is driving people insane. People can't handle relentless change.

Starting point is 00:20:31 And technologists love relentless change, and I like a lot of technologists. Couple of really good friends of mine, but they're anomalies. A lot of them are literally autistic. I'm not attacking them. I'm praising them, but they're different from most people. The sacks on the front.

Starting point is 00:20:44 We know. We're not talking. people. The sex is on the front. Right, no, Tucker. Right, wait, no. Like they can handle it. They can, like, they want a world that's totally different from today's world tomorrow. They want that. They thrive and that's flux. They do.

Starting point is 00:20:55 They don't understand how rare they are. And if you impose that on a society, and you don't ever have a period where you pause and let things settle, you will blow up that society. And the Chinese who I don't admire for many things at all, know this, and I admire that about them. They think that change for its own sake is dangerous. Now, they think it's dangerous to their power and they're absolutely right,

Starting point is 00:21:19 but it's also dangerous just to like the idea of a society. What is a society? And so, anyway, I can go on and on and on. But that's my main concern. Let me propose a theory and see if you react to it. I think that there's a big orientation and society where it's constantly about trying to shift the power dynamics. That everyone always feels like they don't have something that someone else has.

Starting point is 00:21:43 And that other person that has it, for some reason, is advantaged in a way that to them always feels unfair. And everyone feels this way, everyone. That's right. You're at the top of the food chain. You feel like someone else has something you don't have, and it's unfair in the system is set up that way. No matter where you sit. And as a result of that, and by the way, this goes about, I get, I get why super philosophical and stuff, but like Buddhism's always had this point that like the desire that humans have is the one thing that causes all of societal suffering,

Starting point is 00:22:15 behavior, everything. But it all comes down to this. It's that you see that someone else has something, you desire it, and then you want to change the dynamic of how the system, how society is organized to fix that. The thing about technology if you think back the catapult gave an advantage to an army that allowed them to win in a war so to the rifle so to the nuclear bomb that ultimately technology was the enabling force that allowed a rapid shift in power dynamics and all technology ultimately creates leverage for the creator of the technology initially and then it diffuses to everyone. But that is perhaps why. This is a theory

Starting point is 00:22:52 I have, which is that there's generally pessimism towards technology because it creates unfair advantages that shift the power dynamic too quickly and too advantageously. And it's also why I think you don't hear a lot of support for technology from most of society because technology creators are such a small percentage of society. So I don't know if that resonates with your point, but for me, it's all with value. I think that's really smart

Starting point is 00:23:17 and I think it's indisputably true, absolutely. I will say you're making an argument in addition to many other things against tribalisms because tribalism accentuates these pre-existing impulses in people, which again, like all impulses are just inborn. Like, human nature is immutable, so let's just start there. It cannot be changed. AI will not change human nature. it'll change everything but human nature. And envy and the fact that prosperity is a relative measure above starvation. Totally. So it's like, if there's a famous Russian proverb, like, I've got a cow, my neighbor has

Starting point is 00:23:58 a cow, he gets a cow. Now he has two cows, I kill his cow. Right, totally. Right, it's Right, so but tribalism, especially in a country like ours, which as noted doesn't have a working majority of people with obvious connection to each other, it really, really exacerbates that a lot. And because it makes it more obvious, so all of a sudden it's not just like, hey, the smart kids are richer, they have two cows. It's like the Jews are richer or the Indians

Starting point is 00:24:30 are richer or the whites are richer or whatever. It's like just name the group. And once you go down that road, that leads to violence and mass violence actually. A lot of people listening right now, Tucker, are probably a little bit confused hearing you talk about cohesion of the country when most people would look at, you know, the tribalism as almost most manifested in cable news. You and Rachel Maddo every night were, you know, number one and number two in the ratings, taking either side of the tribe. So is this something that's evolved and how did your time and cable news inform you to this?

Starting point is 00:25:08 Because most people would say, like, wait, isn't Tucker and Rachel, like, isn't that, aren't those the two tribe leaders? I think they're dumb people who think that. But no, here's the difference. My views are dumb people. Oh no, I'm not a question here with that. I'm not a clue to go.

Starting point is 00:25:23 No, I'm not a clue to go. No, no, no, no. It, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't always love, but I certainly think that reason disagreement is essential. It's the alternative to violence, by the way, that's what that is. Debate and politics are the alternative violence. You get two choices. We're going to do it by arguing about it, or we're going to do it by force, okay? So, I absolutely think it's essential to debate things, because if we don't, then we

Starting point is 00:26:01 just have to shoot each other other and I'm against that. But that's very different from tribalism, because tribalism is based on things that you can't change. So for example, in 2002 I hosted the show on CNN and it was the run up to the Warner Rock. I was uncomfortable with the idea that we would be invading a rock to respond to an attack on America that had nothing to do with Iraq. I didn't think that didn't make sense, but I was sold on the idea finally by someone and I foolishly paraded the Bush administration's line on that. So I was a pro-war person for a time. Then I went to Iraq and I changed my views completely.

Starting point is 00:26:39 So I switched sides completely and I wound up on the other side, anti-war in Iraq. And that took about a week. I was born a white man, you were born whatever you are, everyone's born whatever they are, that can't change. So if we stoke division along lines that can't be changed, then we're really to cul-de-sac. Our differences can never be resolved. You will always be what you are, you can't change it. And the same for me. And so those are the things that wind up becoming generational conflicts, civil wars, Rwanda. And so I've always been against that my entire life and my entire time on Fox,

Starting point is 00:27:16 I argued against that. I think affirmative action is completely not only immoral because it's an insult to the idea of America, which is like the people who do the best get the most. But it is also a recipe over time for violence. And I made that case, I've made that case every single day, you know, since David and I had lunch 30 years ago, I've never not thought that. I've always had the Dr. Sus' view of race relations, which is we should deem, and elevate, you know, merit, achievement, hard work,

Starting point is 00:27:49 character, the things that we can control. And, but the other side has gone, and by the way, liberals used to agree with me, that used to be a liberal position within my lifetime. And then all of a sudden it became a Nazi position. And, you know, that's just an impulation of language, but the truth is, on the race stuff, which is what matters over time.

Starting point is 00:28:09 If you convince people to hate others on the basis of their race, you've committed a massive sin, and you've done a lot to wreck our country, that's coming from the left. I'm sorry, that's just true. This is to connect these ideas. I think that is a major source of our division,

Starting point is 00:28:21 is one of the reasons why people have a hard time saying, what it means to be an American American is because there are dueling visions of what it means to be an American. The left has been trying to change or rewrite American history. So for example, the key year in American history the founding of the nation was not 1776 with the declaration of independence. it was 1619. Right, this is the base of the whole 1619 project of the New York Times is that the founding of the nation began with the importation of slavery to the New World. That was the key year. And so I think there's been an effort for a long time

Starting point is 00:28:55 on the part of the left to rewrite what it means to be an American. And to rewrite American history, it's actually in a weird way. It's the opposite of what Dung Shopping did in China where Dung basically, he flipped the doctrine over there from communism to capitalism. He didn't outright declare it. He said that it doesn't matter whether a cat is wider black as long as it catches mice, and they didn't change the name. They didn't change the party. It's still the Chinese Communist Party. They didn't change the flag, but he did a hot swap of the back end to capitalism. They changed what the country was about in that.

Starting point is 00:29:30 And how do we get economically? It worked out great for them. I think in a similar way in the United States, they haven't changed the flag. They haven't changed the name. But there's an attempt to hot swap the back end of what it means to be an American. And I think this is the root of the conflict. I mean, I agree with that completely. And I don't think we've thought through what it means to change, you know, out of many one to, out of one many. I think that's, we've set ourselves up

Starting point is 00:30:00 for something really, really scary, again, for violent conflict. Because I don't see how that resolves itself. Why is people understand this? In a diverse society, pluralistic society, whatever you call it, a society where you've got a lot of different people, a lot of different backgrounds and shades and religions and all this stuff, you need to de-emphasize the things that divide us inherently and emphasize the things that unite us. that's not hard and it's also so obvious that if you're not doing it My first question is why are you not doing that?

Starting point is 00:30:31 I mean why are you not and and that kind of explains the true loathing that I have for the people in charge on both sides Because like if you did that in your household with your children Your kids would be in rehab or jail or dead. It's that obvious. Like you would never do that to your kids. So why would you do that to your population? Sir, Breberg, you had a question. Well, where does responsibility lie there, Tucker?

Starting point is 00:30:56 What's the mechanism for doing that? Because we often, and I find, in conversations, everyone says the government should. And I often question why the government should anything in my life, in my social settings, in how I live, how I do business. Does the government, the federal government in the United States have a role in responsibility to do what you're suggesting we need to do in the United States have a role in responsibility to do what you're suggesting we need to do in the United States.

Starting point is 00:31:27 Or is it the media or is it social leaders or is it business leaders or is it local governments who is responsible ultimately for creating the social cohesion necessary for the U.S. to enter a new era of prosperity and why is that the right group to be responsible? Well, look, I would say, well, it's a great question and I would say new era of prosperity, I don't think that's really the goal. We have prosperity.

Starting point is 00:31:57 And I think it's a real question is to where people want prosperity. Do people want, I mean, I think there's actually a lot of evidence that human beings sort of hate prosperity actually The ones designed to be prosperous and the second we are we invent climate crises to to to make us less prosperous I mean, that's really what that is, right? But anyway, leaving that aside It's it's incumbent on all of us anyone with authority anyone with a voice anyone with money and it's really kind of is

Starting point is 00:32:24 Simple and and I do think you know government is kind of the last to fall in line. It's really as simple as making things socially and acceptably. I grew up in a world where people smoked on airplanes, okay? Now that was banned by the FAA, but it was also made totally socially and acceptably. You couldn't light a cigarette in someone's kitchen. You just wouldn't think to do that. In the same way that you wouldn't think to give the middle finger to an old lady,

Starting point is 00:32:48 which is not actually illegal, but nobody would do that because it's so appalling in the minds of everybody and everyone's happy to say, what the hell are you doing? And I feel the same way about the race stuff. It's like, oh, you know, race this, race that. Someone should say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop that. There's part of what you're saying, which I think is, which I really agree with, which is this idea that we have gone as the human race, okay?

Starting point is 00:33:12 From having to make major adaptations over the arc of our evolution as a species. To now, what you're kind of saying is we're now dealing with all these minor adaptations and it kind of breaks the entire circuitry of the brain, which is like before we had to fight to evade the animals to feed ourselves, to build the machine, to all of a sudden go from an agrarian to an industrial, these were huge adaptations. And now we have all of this hummus surplus and excess. And it's a little bit of a headscratcher for a lot of people because now all the adaptations that are left are very minor in shape because all of these other things that would other occupy your time, sustenance, survival, resiliency are taken off the table. I get that. The other part of what you say, which is very renage your art, which is like, hey, there's all this copying of people and desire. There's going to be violence if we don't figure out how to decarge it.

Starting point is 00:34:12 What do you think we need to do in order to do that discharge? How do you get these people to stop focusing on the small order bits and how do we reorganize people to focus on the big order bits so that we minimize this risk of violence. We minimize the one group of immutable traits fighting another group of immutable traits. How does that happen, do you think? You know, I'm pretty pessimistic about a country this big and we say the country. I mean, when I talk about the country, I'm talking about people I know were grew up with or people who speak my language.

Starting point is 00:34:48 I mean, the country is so big that something gonna happen in New Mexico, something big gonna happen in New Mexico, or San Francisco, or that matter. And people don't even know. So like, but in general, I would say, it's hard to see a changing course before we're forced to. And so I do think... You think basically there has to be a moment of something that's so egregious that causes

Starting point is 00:35:13 a national reconciliation of some kind. Essentially that says, hold on a second. You want to know what I really think, which is like kind of crackpot, but I know that it's right. Yes. I do think the problem is prosperity. And I've noticed this as a middle-aged man, as I've gotten older, and I know that it's right. Yes. I do think the problem is prosperity. And I've noticed this as a middle-aged man, as I've gotten older, and I know people who've been successful, in some cases very successful.

Starting point is 00:35:32 And I've noticed that when they succeed, when they get everything, they want to destroy themselves. I've noticed this again and again and again. You are the dog who caught the car. And actually it's more than just having idle time. There's a metaphysical quality. There are factors that I don't understand that are deeper actually, but I just notice it.

Starting point is 00:35:53 There's something about affluence that over time convinces people to kill themselves. And you see it in a literal sense in the Euthanasia numbers that of Canada and out of the... Well, you like in a literal sense in the euthanasia numbers out of Canada and out of New York. Well, you see it in a literal sense when you look at the incidence of diabetes as correlated to GP. That's exactly right.

Starting point is 00:36:13 Exactly right. You look at these emerging economies and as GDP cranks, the first thing that happens is heart disease cranks up. And diabetes cranks up because to your point Tucker, they start to enjoy the prosperity of their earned life. But they're not enjoying it. That's the thing. The other thing you see is they stop having children, which is a form of suicide.

Starting point is 00:36:31 You're not reproducing. There's no other culture that has left a written record in history that didn't see having children as like the primary, first of all, the primary shows a wealth, and not just because they worked on your farm, but because they exist and so do your genes. So if you start to see every, it's not just a matter of culture. It happens in non-Christian Japan. It happens in post-Christian Spain. It happens in South Korea with a .7 repolisman, you know, reproduction rate, .7.

Starting point is 00:37:04 So what is that? And again, it's the same thing. It's that affluence kills you. And if you don't believe it, fast for three days. Fasting, by the way, is a feature not just of, you know, Christian history, every religion and every culture that I'm aware of has acknowledged fasting as an important religious ritual. Why is that? Why would foregoing food be so important?

Starting point is 00:37:29 We'll try it for three days. In experience, you're quivering like a tuning fork. Your sensitivity just explodes. There's something about eating too much, literally satisfying the most basic need of all, which is for calories. There's something about that that kills you. And there's something about foregoing it that enlightens you.

Starting point is 00:37:47 It's like super interesting. So I'm, look, there's so much I don't know. I'm the last person who want to listen to these are deeper waters that I'm qualified to weigh in. But my senses tell me very, very strongly that the core problem is having too much. And I'm not calling for taking things away. I think the global warming bullshit is bullshit, okay? I mean, obviously it is.

Starting point is 00:38:06 Climate crisis. It's propaganda, but it's coming out of, it's also sincere to some extent. It's not just a power grab by Davos. It's more than that. It's people's gut level sense that we need to have less because this is killing us. And that is real.

Starting point is 00:38:21 For this. It's Tucker-Tech global warming is bullshit. It's just gonna pull up and it makes four of bullshit is I just want to just want his reaction to it. You just said that on salt and of sides. Let's see. No, but I'm like, yeah, no, I think it's like just on that topic, you know, data shows, temperatures are getting warmer, also the baseline of 500 years and now things get Oh, no, no, I'm not saying it's not getting warmer. It seems to be getting warmer. I'm really saying this whole elaborate theory that humans are causing this rise in temperatures

Starting point is 00:38:54 and we know how to reverse it through, say, shutting down the use of hydrocarbons. Yeah, I mean, and even if that were true, what we're doing to affect those changes shows how fraudulent the whole thing is. I mean, you know the whole argument, but I'm not actually calling it a question that is changing. Temperatures always change. I live in Maine, which was shaped by the glaciers 10,000 years ago. So like, yeah, we've had some climate change. Do you think that human civilization is not threatened by the change in climate? I just, this is a quick little point, but do I think him? well, sure. I mean, it's threatened in some ways, probably help in other ways.

Starting point is 00:39:27 I personally hate hot weather, so I don't care for it. I think there's quite a bit of evidence that previous, that actually temperature changes can be much more radical than we think, and I'll just give you one example that no one's ever explained, but you're aware that there are all these woolly mammoths found in case tonight since Siberia and the Soviet, early Soviet 1920s expedition to map all of Russia, found these things, and at least one stranded expedition ate them.

Starting point is 00:39:55 Okay? They ate the woolly mammoth because it had been frozen so thoroughly that after thousands of years the meat was still edible. Yeah. Well, the question is, how did that happen? And I think it was the guy who ran bird's eye frozen food who was an expert on freezing meat. It's like, wait a second, that weighs X thousand pounds.

Starting point is 00:40:12 It would have to be frozen extremely quickly, and I know this from hunting, too. You have to freeze meat very fast to keep it from spoiling. From the back. So how did that happen? Well, no, no, for real though, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's hundreds or thousands of large animals get frozen so quickly that the meat is still edible thousands of years later. That's an honest question that no one's ever answered. And the only potential or even plausible answer is temperature changed so fast it flash froze them.

Starting point is 00:40:54 Well, how did that happen? Like what? No, these are sincere questions. And so temperature. I'll look into it. I'll get back to you. I've not heard about this. No, but what is that?

Starting point is 00:41:03 Flash frozen. Well, that's interesting. No, I mean, it reminds me of that Marlon Brando film. You remember where he goes to an island and eats the super rare food? It's like a Komodo dragon or something. The graduate, Matthew Broderickson, it's so good. It's like the expedition to Siberia to eat the flash frozen, will we, man, that's to make a good sequel?

Starting point is 00:41:21 But it's interesting. I'm going to look into it. I don't know the answer to how and why the women are in this process. But the climate, here's the point, that we have physical evidence that the climate on earth within, you know, inside our atmosphere has changed dramatically, so dramatically that it would, you know, kill every person

Starting point is 00:41:37 who was affected by it like a number of times that we know of over the course of the history of the earth. So like, I mean, I think there could,, I think we could be in for actual climate change that killed everybody that's entirely possible. But the idea that it's the fault of the United States because of, you know, you drive an F-150 is like so absurd, it's like, hard to believe anyone takes that seriously. There's like no evidence of that actually, sorry. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:02 I'm generally just an, I'm an optimist about solutions anyway, but you know, I think human ingenuity has always prevailed. So all this pessimism and catastrophizing, I do disagree with respect to like, there are science that indicates that there are elements that were kind of affecting things in an adverse way, the challenging way, but I'm not concerned about the challenges just because of where human technology sits and the things we can way, but I'm not concerned about the challenges, just because of where human technology sits and the things we can do. So I'm a slightly different point of view, but I hear you on it. I don't wanna debate the point.

Starting point is 00:42:33 Sorry, Jamoth, go ahead. Yeah, that's a whole nother thing. I just wanna up level this back to something, because I think if I had to summarize what you're saying is, you're saying, our society is too prosperous, and as a result result that prosperity creates small fringe issues that dominate which then creates an inability for us to be cohesive.

Starting point is 00:42:50 So then if we have something that allows us to be forced to be more resilient, we will actually wake up from this fever and say, hold on guys, what are the big issues? Let's really figure out what matters. Let's get organized and let's go after those. And that both is a healing of the country, but it's almost like our insurance policy. Is that kind of a set of fair summary, if I had to put what you're saying in a box or is that? Well, I would hate ever to seem like I'm looking forward to catastrophe because I'm not. And I hope it doesn't unfold that.

Starting point is 00:43:23 No, no, I don't think so. No, I mean, I used to drink too much, and I know a lot of people used to drink too much, and you know, you drugs or whatever, and some of them didn't get better until they went to jail. You know, as people drink too much tend to do over time. That never happened to me, and I'm so grateful for it.

Starting point is 00:43:36 Like, you don't need to get to the bottom here. You don't, I don't think that you do. I'm just really worried that we're not even having a conversation about this. But I, again, would point to what he said a second ago, but there's something metaphysical here. There's something deeper than just the search for advantage, which is a big motivator among people, but there's something more than that going on.

Starting point is 00:44:00 Why are we intentionally wrecking the society? And we are. And I hear people say, well, it's because some people are getting paid. Yeah, it's not really an adequate answer. It's more than that. There's something going on. Instinctively, some people want to tear it all down. And I don't think it's necessarily so they can rebuild it

Starting point is 00:44:22 to their own advantage. I think destruction is the point. And I just watch carefully. And I don't really know's necessarily so they can rebuild it to their own advantage. I think destruction is the point. And I just watch carefully. And I don't really know what's going on here, but something much deeper than what we're acknowledging is going on here. Well, I think it comes back to this point about I can't get what these other people have. Yes. And there's now an insurmountable barrier that I cannot ever get there.

Starting point is 00:44:40 I don't know. I don't know. I mean, that doesn't explain why, but hold on, that doesn't explain why, for example, Dustin Moskovitz is supporting revolutionary politics and chase of redeeming the bill. Oh, I think it's a good example. Saxony, it does. When you have massive abundance to Schemaughts Point about the idle mind, you know, Dustin Moskovitz has achieved more than any human could achieve billions of dollars.

Starting point is 00:45:03 And now he's got this surplus. And then whatever, you know, to Tucker's. And now he's got this surplus. And then whatever, you know, to Tucker's point, whatever he's dealing with personally now becomes this, you know, canvas under which he's going to deploy that wealth in an outsourced way. I think it actually does explain it. If it's more with like luxury beliefs than with the idea that like scarcity or envy is somehow driving it. Yeah, but yes, those are luxury beliefs, and he's got a huge bankroll. Therefore it has an outsized impact, a sort of tuckers-posing. No, I think the luxury point is once you reach a certain point, your attention can then

Starting point is 00:45:35 shift to morality. When you're starving in a street and you need to fit your children, you're not focusing your whole day on the morality and better treatment of others in the world and extending morality to the rest of the world. But when you have that luxury, you have to focus your attention in that sense. I do think that there's this large element that the term equality gets re-cast into every aspect of society, which ultimately leads to this general point of view of Marxism, which is everyone has to have an equal outcome versus an equal opportunity, and that's where

Starting point is 00:46:10 the prosperity takes this. But I think I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think it's maybe more profound than that. I mean, you're absolutely right that only societies that have reached a certain point can afford to think about certain things. You don't see, you know, hunter-gatherer societies don't debate effective altruism because they're looking for roots, okay? So I agree with that.

Starting point is 00:46:29 However, if you look at the behavior of, you know, some of the richest people in our society, and I can't speak to Dustin Moskovitz, but I have the, you know, I know people like that, what they're funding are not exactly luxury beliefs. They're like funding funding destruction actually. And so like, previous generations of liberal rich people funded things like public libraries, summer camps for poor kids, remember the New York Times, you used to have these fundraisers, like fresh air to fund or whatever. And people made fun, I always kind of like that.

Starting point is 00:46:58 Like, you have extra money and like, you know, help the poor kids. You know, whether it works or not we can debate, but like, I get it. But not Dustin Moss, if you're Dustin Moss, if you're any, You know, whether it works or not, we can debate, but like, I get it. But if your Dustin Moskets are any, I don't mean to pick on him, but are any like really rich person, you're at Baker's Bay or some discovery property

Starting point is 00:47:12 that, you know, you and your billionaire friends go to, you might occur to you like, why not build one of these for like all the poor kids? Like, only poor black kids get to go to this resort for a week. And that might be, it might work, it might not work. Like, all of American social, the history of American social reform is kind of species of that. Like we're gonna help poor people by doing this or that. That's not what they're doing.

Starting point is 00:47:33 It's like, hey poor people, here's some more crack pipes. And like we're gonna, it's immoral to criticize your drug addiction. And what we need are more black people selling weed. Or it's cool to set fires, or we can't criticize you for burning down Wendy's. Like what? That is not the same thing. That is super dark. There's no even possibility of uplift or advancement.

Starting point is 00:47:53 It's just the opposite. They know it. These are smart people. So, like, what are we looking at? I'll talk, or he's in Dustin's mind. I sure believe he's doing the right thing. Yeah, he thinks he's doing the right thing. So I guess that's his kind of like. He thinks he's funding social justice.

Starting point is 00:48:07 I think like Sora should be an even better example, right? Where like it's hard to argue that what he's funding is not extremely destructive. So the revolutionary politics are not somehow coming from below the way you would expect a revolution to normally happen. They're being imposed from above by some of the biggest winners in our society. And that is weird, that is a contradiction. That is not what you expect. It is a bizarre outcome.

Starting point is 00:48:31 Let's say, it's exactly what you'd expect. And it's exactly what happened in the Bolshevik revolution. I mean, half of the Roman off household, the, you know, Nicholas II, who was murdered with his wife and children in the basement, is, you know, by the Bol Bolsheviks his extended household supported the Bolsheviks Rich people some who are a small minority by the way there are a million different revolutionary groups at the end of the first world war in Russia

Starting point is 00:48:54 Clearly was going to be a change clear the monarchy was doomed and there were a lot of different options and the most radical crazy nihilistic atheistic Option was the Bolsheviks and they had the support of the rich people, including the Zards family. What is that? It's the same thing, always the same thing. It's the people with the most have the strongest desire to kill themselves and their society.

Starting point is 00:49:15 That's just true. It's an interesting area. There are some people who are very thoughtful, right? You have Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos who are thinking about philanthropy in a very thoughtful way. They can make mistakes, of course, but they're thinking, hey, where's the most suffering? How do I work backwards from mosquito tans to vaccines or whatever, we perceive is what they perceive

Starting point is 00:49:32 is the most suffering they can relieve in the world. So it does seem like I can go either way. But Tucker, do you think it's because most people that get very wealthy, very fast feel like it was unfair? And they feel guilty, and then they have to destroy the system they got in there. I think that's such a deep point though because I know that you live among people,

Starting point is 00:49:55 I mean, you're familiar with this world. So, and only someone who is could say that because you're absolutely right. Rich people are not all the same. If you meet someone who made his money incrementally over time, he's much less likely to have the desire, you know, you may not agree with him on everything, maybe a good person, a bad

Starting point is 00:50:09 person, but he doesn't want to tear it down. And he doesn't feel especially guilty for what he has. And I have found just a non-political point, but as I get older, I want to spend the last time with people who hate themselves because they're not capable of loving other people. Like, that's not a good place to start actually as a person to hate yourself or feel super guilty. It really isn't. You don't end up helping others when you feel that way. But when you find people who inherited a lot of money, we never talk about that to huge

Starting point is 00:50:35 problem in this country. I'm not arguing for the death tax at all, but I'm just saying as an observation, there's a huge class of people with massive inherited wealth and they're almost all horrible. Not all of them. I know very well, I know some of them and they're fine. Some of them are great. But as a class, they're awful.

Starting point is 00:50:53 And they don't help at all. And they're also super annoying and dumb. And I think it's the well, it's just true and everyone knows it's true. But I don't want to say that much about it. We're about to do that for tens of millions of Americans, right? I know. I know. I right? You know, I know I know about to go the largest generation of wealth transfer beyond imagination. We're talking trillions and trillions and trillions. I know. So I know that problem that you just encapsulated, we're going to cascade across tens of millions of Americans. It's also

Starting point is 00:51:19 happened in Japan. And in Japan, they have negative growth rate as well. Let's pivot to a topic that Wait, can I ask you have you been to Japan recently? Yeah, I was there last year. Okay, so me too So I you know people you always read like all the libertarian Economists and the Wall Street Journal. They're always like oh Japan's a disaster negative growth and then you go to Japan It's the best place you can have revisions. My favorite country is hands down. Did you go to Tokyo? Did you go skiing in a seco? Where'd you go? I went to Kyoto in Tokyo and I'll be back to ski on the North Island because it's like why wouldn't you? It's like the have you ever skied a seco? I never. But I'm pretty excited. I went last year. It is

Starting point is 00:51:58 like 25 out of 30 days in January and February. It dumps powder and the powder is like dust. It's like and the powder is like dust. It's like makes Utah powder look like heavy. It is insane. I'm going back if you want to go, February. I'm going to have a bromance. Sorry, we talked right now. You guys can have one on your bed.

Starting point is 00:52:20 This is going to make Sats loses mind if Tucker and I caught it in the set. Can I ask you a question like if Japan is the butt of every joke that economists tell or the focus of the concern of economy, lots of chin tugging and fretting about Japan's negative rough economy. And then you go to Japan and there's literally not one piece of litter and four year olds ride the subway on a company. The highest function society you could imagine. Okay, birth rate is going down. That's the only thing that's crazy.

Starting point is 00:52:45 The birth rate is a real thing. I totally agree. That's probably the product of getting atomic bombs dropped on you. And maybe the fact also that like the highest testosterone males fool their planes into the US aircraft carriers or whatever, it's probably a lot of reason. Interesting there. But it, well, that's a real thing, by the way. You kill all the high-team males in your society changes.

Starting point is 00:53:04 But I don't think that we're using the right measurements, and I do think that we're taking economists a little more seriously than they deserve, because they're not describing what Japan actually is, which is freaking awesome, and way more functional than our society, despite the massive disparity in growth. The thing you'll find is every person in Japan takes their job that they're doing

Starting point is 00:53:22 as incredibly important and has mass pride in it. That's why when you go there as an American, you're like, wait, wasn't this what America was about? It's really shocking as Americans. You're like, this is what I want society to be. I want the person who works in the subway or the stock market or the newspaper to take their job deadly, serious and put their best effort in. So why should I care about growth?

Starting point is 00:53:42 Wait, but hold on, though, why should I care about economic growth at least as measured in the conventional sense? The only reason is if you have a lot of debt. That's it. Yes. If you didn't have all the debt, you shouldn't care about economic growth rate with respect to the measure of prosperity. The strange that happens.

Starting point is 00:53:59 I also, you know, if the pie isn't getting bigger and people aren't doing better than that does so the seeds for a revolution. All this divisiveness will start to explode if people don't feel like their circumstances are getting better off. This is where, in this one limited way, I guess I'd be in favor of rapid change, which is the technological area. I'm against revolutionary politics. I'm against that kind of revolutionary change because it almost never works out. But I do think that revolutionary change in the narrow category of technology is ultimately good for us. I know it creates challenges. I know it creates

Starting point is 00:54:35 disruption. People do lose their jobs and have to find new ones. But it is the basis for American prosperity and the basis for our economy being productive at America having a powerful military and all those things. So I don't know if there's a difference between us Tucker, but I do think that in this area of technological change, I'm not sort of a dispositional conservative. I mean, this is kind of like Peter Teal, right? I don't want us to slow down. Actually, I want us to be successful.

Starting point is 00:55:03 And it feels like actually, it's the people on the left who are generally in this camp of wanting to slow us down and admire us in regulations and make it harder to make progress technologically, because it's something they don't control. I agree with that. I just, I guess the net result is what I care about. I think it's, if you talk to old people which i is not i'm getting older and i've talked to you know older relatives and stuff like what what bothers you and i used to think it was you know taking

Starting point is 00:55:33 a leak six times a night but it's really not the thing that bothers old people i've spoken to anyway is the change is like they don't just don't recognize it and that's really hard for people to deal with and so all i'm saying I'm certainly not calling for a halt to technological progress, that would be terrible. All I'm saying is, in tandem with those advancements, should be the concern about people's ability to digest massive change. And like, let's keep some things the same.

Starting point is 00:56:01 You know, you just can't change everything. It's like bad, it's super bad. So like, maybe we get AI, but let's keep Halloween. You're arguing for tradition and things that bring people together. This country was built off of immigrants, obviously. And this is one of the most polarizing issues, Tucker, in each election cycle and in the country, are at large right now. What is your vision for how American immigration should work here in the 21st century?

Starting point is 00:56:34 Well, ideal year right now. Right now? And then ideally. Let's start with, what would you do right now? Short-term, you're gonna be able to do it. Well, actually, if you don't mind, I'll quickly invert it and say, of course the goal is just a rational immigration policy

Starting point is 00:56:46 whose purpose is to help your country. What would that mean? Well, I can see an argument, for example, if you needed, I don't know. There was a time for the guy who just sent my call to the room and my best friend came to this country from India because both his parents were physicians and there was a lack of physicians with de-industrialization ever was moving out of the small towns. And so we expedited the visas of foreign physicians. Most of them were Indians.

Starting point is 00:57:09 I think most were Indians. His parents actually came from Africa, but whatever the point is, there are Indian doctors and they came here and they settled in a little town in Massachusetts, a rural town, dying mill town. And it was great. It was great for them.

Starting point is 00:57:22 It was great for the town. The guy became my best friend. I mean, like, that's just, that's what you want, right? We need this and we're gonna in a very smart intentional way. Try to get it on the world market and we can, we will. And I'm totally for that. What we're doing now is throwing open the doors to anyone who wants to come here from the poorest countries in the world at a scale that we can't possibly digest. So how many people are here illegally working off the books? Some estimates, 60, 70 million, those are real estimates, by the way, not for crackpot

Starting point is 00:57:52 estimates. But the truth is we don't know. We have no ideas. We've completely lost control. And we don't know who these people are. I honestly think most of them are here for a better life. I believe that. I think most of them are probably good people.

Starting point is 00:58:04 I think most of them agree with my politics, actually, for whatever it's worth. Definitely much more than the unhappy private equity wives do. For sure, the average guy from Nigeria is like on my side, every Salvadoran agrees with me. So I like that, but I also think it's too much, actually. At exactly the moment when Native born Americans birth rates are tanking, over 100,000 people die of fentanylodes and we're pushing euthanasia on the population, which we are. You're basically just saying, you have given up on the people who live here, whatever

Starting point is 00:58:35 they're color or background, and we're just going to import new people and replace them with new people. That's literally what's happening. And when you say that out loud, they freak out and call you some sort of crazed bigot for saying the word replacement, but that's what it is. It's happening in Western Europe and Ireland, particularly. That's what those riots were about. Not that I'm endorsing the riots, but that's what that was.

Starting point is 00:58:55 And that's like insane for a government to do to its own people. It's totally insane. And more than anything, it is an expression of loathing for the people who live there. It's a delusion of their political power, it's a delusion of their economic power. It's the total destruction of the basic services that they paid for, like schools, hospitals, roads, like those are gone. So the last thing I'll say is people say, well, immigrants are coming here looking for a lot of life, and I believe that, having talked to a lot of immigrants and grown up around

Starting point is 00:59:24 them in Southern California, And I believe that having talked to a lot of immigrants and grown up around them in Southern California, I totally believe that. But the question for government is, am I making the citizens life better? It's like no one even thinks that. So it's importing people making the life. So when my friends' parents came, both physicians to the little town, little mill town in New England, his parents made the town better for the people who lived there. They were the doctors.

Starting point is 00:59:46 And they were super successful, actually, and great people. Tucker, can you give us a rundown of the current political landscape? Just tell us, I'm just really curious what you think about RFK, Biden, Trump, VVAN, maybe like 10, 15 seconds on each. It's so hard. It's so hard. I mean, I mean, the thing that jumps out today, my view changes all the time. I don't think Biden can be the nominee. His only point was to, you know,

Starting point is 01:00:14 stop Bernie Sanders basically, and he's outlived his usefulness. So I think it'll be, I'm pretty sure it'll be replaced. But as on the Republican side and the independence, you know, it's so hard to know. I'm just mesmerized by the love for Nikki Haley. It was like the most, and I'm sorry, and like, for example, I saw Jamie Diamond who I really like and I know, and I have always admired, but when Jamie Diamond starts like freeballing on,

Starting point is 01:00:40 you know, Nikki Haley and saying nonsensical things about Nikki Haley, I'm like, I wanna call him and say, you're humiliating yourself. First of all, you're way out of your depth. You have no idea what you're talking about. But for another, you're just betraying how completely out of touch you are. And I think Jamie got, and again, I say this with admiration for Jamie Dimon, which is

Starting point is 01:00:54 long held. But like, if you get to a place where you think that Nikki Haley has a shot of getting elected in a free and fair election, like, you have no idea what's going on in your own country. It's just embarrassing to say that. Super embarrassing. Explain to the audience. Impact that.

Starting point is 01:01:08 Why is Nikki Haley not dead? I'm not sure. Really, it's not personal. I actually don't care for Nikki Haley as a person, but that's immaterial. Nikki Haley's program, or what she stands for, what she believes, maybe moral or immoral, got all judge.

Starting point is 01:01:21 It's not popular with the public. And it's super easy to know that. Perstands are more specifically, yeah. Erstands are more anti-neconomics. moral or immoral, goddle judge. It's not popular with the public. And it's super easy to understand that. That's more specifically, yeah. Or it stands out more in an economics. And we know that from looking at the Gallup poll, which is a rolling survey of people's attitudes on things, and in an actual democracy, you would see the leading candidates for people who hope to become the leading candidates articulate concerns and layout views that reflected the concerns of the population who are going to put them into office

Starting point is 01:01:48 but you know that's the most right now all trump is a fair to say niki hailey is basically an unreconstructed bush republican yes yes her views are based on the same views of dork w bush she once again some all sorts of new wars and i don't even think she regrets the forever wars the middle East that were so disastrous. I haven't heard one word of criticism from her or remorse that she supported all those

Starting point is 01:02:10 things. And on the economic policies, this is kind of this like corporatism. It's like the whole Trump rebellion never even happened in the Republican Party. It's just like a right back to the past. And the fact that the establishment's sort of coalescing around her kind of tells me that as much as I didn't want to believe this, I think that Trump is still the indispensable figure in the Republican party because if you take him away, they're going to revert right back to where they were. They're going to go right back to

Starting point is 01:02:41 the factory settings on Republicans, which is Bush Republicanism. Tucker, can you just finish the rest of them? Yeah, I'm okay, Vivek. Trump. Well, I mean, I know Vivek well personally and it shows that I'm out of touch too. I mean, you know, 54. So I don't have my finger on every pulse. But so I like Vivek, actually. But I see these surveys where he's not doing well and people don't like his personality or whatever,

Starting point is 01:03:07 he's a little overbearing that never bothers me at all. I'm just not put off by that at all. And I'm a little bit confused by why he's not doing better. Again, that's a reflection on, I've just made fun of Jamie Diamond. Here I am doing it myself. Like, why is it a Vic doing better? I'm sure there are reasons I just don't.

Starting point is 01:03:23 I think his program is solid i think he's reasonable that he's smart i don't think he's some creepy agenda um... so but he's not he's not doing well as a defect uh... bobby kennedy i know quite well and and think a lot of him and uh... he's a very easy i think he's a decent man and a principled person

Starting point is 01:03:43 he's smart um... you know ipled person. I think he's smart. I have quite as much confidence in maybe some of the people around him. I feel like maybe there are other agendas that he's not aware of. I don't know I can't assess, but yeah, so that's what I think. What President Trump? Well, I mean, the New York Times had a piece, I think it was Jonathan Swan, smart,

Starting point is 01:04:07 and had a piece telling you what you already knew kind of, but proving it with numbers that Trump became the nominee in August of last year, 2022, when the FBI went through his wife's underwear drawer in his house. It was so insane that even if you're like, I can't deal with more Trump, and he didn't actually do anything, put Jared and chargerging, you know, like there are lots of frustrations

Starting point is 01:04:28 you could have about Trump if you support a Trump and you could be disappointed. But the second the FBI raids his house on a documents charge and anyone from Washington as I am can tell you that's like insane. Like every, that's like so common. If they're charging him for that, that's a joke. Where are the felonies he supposedly committed? I was led to believe he like murdered people and buried them in the metal lands. Do you know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:04:53 Like, that's the best they got when they did that. I know for a fact in this piece showed it, but I knew it already. A lot of people are like, you know, I have mixed feelings about Trump or I don't want to deal with more Trump drama. But if this is allowed to happen our system won't continue. That's so outrageous That I mean, let's just stop lying about it. That's a political prosecution. You can't have that of the Presidential frontrunner. You can't have that. We already did it with Nixon. You can't do that again And so I think that's the key to his surge. I really do think that. Who's the Democratic nominee if you think Biden's not going to be?

Starting point is 01:05:27 Oh, it's Gavin. It's Gavin. Yeah. Sure. Well, of course, because he's by far the most evil person in the Democratic Party. And in the end, they sort of rise to the peak. You know, oil and water, man. It's just. Yeah. Tucker, just just comment on Gavin, a vetoing the bill that said that you could kind of remove the parents, remove the child from the parents if the parents don't affirm the gender rights of the child. I think there was a lot of folks who sit in your camp typically who were shocked and surprised

Starting point is 01:05:57 and said, wow, I didn't know Gavin actually had a span of opinions. And this is interesting to see. I mean, what, like, yeah. There's no one I know who thought that. And everyone I know who watched that thought the same thing they thought when he met with G, which is, oh, he's gonna be the nominee. And of course, that's what that was.

Starting point is 01:06:16 I mean, I know Gavin Newsom, and I think a lot about Gavin Newsom, many different things about Gavin Newsom, but one thing I know for a fact about Gavin Newsom is he has the capacity to be the lie detector test. Gavin Newsom will say, anything he needs to say, not like Biden is not like this actually, whatever Biden's fault, he's not like this. Like Biden, you know, he has like guilt. If he's lying to you, he gets twitchy.

Starting point is 01:06:43 Gavin Newsom's palms just don't sweat. His respiration doesn't increase. His body temperature doesn't change. Nothing changes in Gavin Newsom when he lies to your face. And there are not that many people like that. Actually, that's a rare quality. Like to lock down the state, to keep people's kids from getting an education,

Starting point is 01:07:01 and to arrest people for surfing, and then go have dinner at the French laundry. Like most people couldn't do that. They just be like, I'm saying he's a sociopath. You're just, he can lie and not care. I'm not a psychiatrist, but I, so I don't know that,

Starting point is 01:07:14 I don't really know the category and I'm not gonna diagnose him, but I'll just say in 50 years of being around a lot of people, I've met very few who can behave that way, very, very few, it's a very unusual quality and of course it's probably useful in politics. It's electable? Is he electable?

Starting point is 01:07:29 Yeah, exactly. Are the American people going to see that the way that you see it? Well, as you know, the system in California does not include elections. I mean, it has nothing to do with what the people think. It's a machine state. It's the most corrupt out of 50. Kamala Harris was like despised by most californians and she you know is a sitting u.s senator

Starting point is 01:07:48 dying poor dianne fine stand my neighbor in washington i don't i don't think she was a horrible person just for the record but she was non-compass menace and like she could have lived well beyond her death as a u.s senator so it's like it's not a democratic state small d democratic state it's not run on the basis of what the population wants. It's a fixed game in California. It does make me very uncomfortable that someone from that political culture, which is an utterly

Starting point is 01:08:13 corrupt political culture, an authoritarian political culture, could enter a presidential race. Clearly, what are you running on if you're Gavin Newsom? As a native Californian, I know what the state was like in 1985 because I live there and it's completely degraded from that time. And how did that happen? Well, part of the big reason is the political leadership of the state. You've got nothing to run on.

Starting point is 01:08:40 What are you running? Have you driven through LA recently? Seriously. What are you running driven through LA recently? Like seriously. So the fact that he would get in the race suggests, you know, they think that they can win without the consent of voters. And that freaks me out. Well, you'll have the media working on overdrive for him, right? I mean, they will turn him somehow into like John F. Kennedy or something. I mean, they will paper over all of his flaws and they'll, you know, they'll basically write puff pieces. It'll bet it'll be like non F. Kennedy or something. I mean, they will paper over all of his flaws

Starting point is 01:09:05 and they'll, you know, they'll basically write puff pieces. It'll be like nonstop and then they'll be attacking Trump. So the media will put him over the top, I think, if he, well, assuming that we have the same media that we had in 2020, that's true. But I mean, that's why you just got to pray every night

Starting point is 01:09:20 for Elon's health. And I mean it, too. I mean it. It's the only platform at scale in the world that's pretty, you know, there's censorship on it, but there's not mass censorship actually, there isn't. And that's the only platform of its kind at scale. It's the only one.

Starting point is 01:09:38 So let's talk about that actually. So, I mean, we've talked in this conversation about how our public discourse is a name and self-destructive and divisive. I would add another word to that, which is controlled. You know, controlled. A good example of this, I think, was just on the Ukraine war.

Starting point is 01:09:57 David R. Kamiya, who is Zelensky's parliamentary leader, who was the lead negotiator for the Ukrainians at Istanbul in the first month of the war when there was a deal on the table. He just testified, basically said an interview, there was a deal on the table to shut the war down. We just would have had to agree to make Ukraine neutral. And of course, the Biden administration told them not to. This war has always been about NATO expansion.

Starting point is 01:10:22 And yet, the party lines from the media media even as all of these proof point stack up i mean we're now on like the tenth person first hand witness to say that this is what this war is all about you still can't get the media to honestly report this this is one example okay

Starting point is 01:10:39 and i i believe that this is one of the reasons why you're firetucker is because you are literally the only person on mainstream network news saying what the war is really about. So this is like one really big example is that we cannot get any truth on an issue as big as Ukraine war. So I guess my question for you is, like, how does control like that happen? Like I don't really understand it myself. We live in a big, what's supposed to be a big democracy,

Starting point is 01:11:06 there's supposed to be a lot of media channels, but yet they all enforce a certain narrative on pretty much every issue. But even, again, I'm picking on, I think one of the biggest issues right now, which is this war we've got going on. I mean, how does that happen? I don't understand it.

Starting point is 01:11:23 How do they maintain that control? This is one of my personal concerns about technology and about progress of all kinds, which is you don't actually know where it's going. You don't. Your best forecast or mine have very often been wrong. And of course, the promise of the internet was diversity and access to information

Starting point is 01:11:41 from a lot of different sources, unfiltered information. You can talk to people in foreign countries for free you know every american will have and cyclopedia at his fingertips and people to be much more informed uh... and no one will be able to control it because it's free and open and and the effect has been you know the opposite there's less i would argue there's been

Starting point is 01:12:02 uh... less freedom uh... in information than there was 30 years ago. How did that happen? I mean, it's a very, I mean, you guys are much better situated to answer that question. Someone should think about that, I think. But the bottom line is, they're just not that many pipelines, actually.

Starting point is 01:12:18 In television, there were three big news channels, cable, broadcast kind of receded an importance. It's mostly about prostate health now. And sort of three big channels, two of them on one side, one was on the other. And then there were the social media giants, but there were not that many of them. And they were all locked down. And they were all riddled with Intel. In some cases, actual, salaried Intel officers, Matt Teebe's amazing reporting has shown this.

Starting point is 01:12:43 Not just American either, from foreign countries. The whole thing was an op, it was insane. And, you know, you could, I'm not going to beat up Unfox News, but there was a kind of a fairly narrow band of acceptable views allowed on that channel. Is that control? Yes it is. And so there really was no remaining place with scale where someone with a dissenting view could give it voice.

Starting point is 01:13:06 And that's just crazy. It's the opposite of what we were promised, but whatever, not to wind about it. But the existence of X, where anyone around the world or in most countries, anyway, can get for free a whole range of opinions that aren't controlled, that changes everything. The primacy of control of information in a war cannot be overstated. Like that's, you could debate whether it's more important than ammunition, but it's right up there. And so I think this election,

Starting point is 01:13:35 if that platform stays free for the next 12 months, I think we have a shot at least of a real election. And I think they're going to do whatever they can to shut it down. We also have web based shows, podcasts, and that even predated a little bit Elon taking over X. Yeah. There is a self-correcting mechanism here. If you feel too controlled, like maybe perhaps you felt or you felt pressure at Fox, I don't wanna speak for you

Starting point is 01:14:01 if you did, then all of a sudden Joe Rogan, all in podcast, whatever podcast all emerge. And now you're show on X. And I'm sure it's gonna be on other platforms as well. Maybe you can speak to what you think the impact of a post Fox Tucker Carlson show will be. And how will you be able to sort of shape the show differently? And if at all.

Starting point is 01:14:23 And what's the mission here? That was my first question, the number I got to, which is post-fox, post-money, post-fame, what is Tucker Carlson's mission statement going forward, what is your goal? The same as before, and I should just be extra clear. I wish I could tell harder stories about Fox, forcing me to take some line or other, but they really didn't,

Starting point is 01:14:44 but they didn didn't. But they didn't want the show anymore, so that kind of tells you. But anyway, the point is my intent in hosting that show is the same as my intent in hosting the show we're about to launch on X, which is do your best to say what you think is true, bring perspectives and information that you don't think are widely covered to a larger audience, and try and stay firm in that, admit when you're wrong, like just be honest. It's actually not, I got in this business

Starting point is 01:15:11 because I hadn't graduated from college and my father's like, it's a pretty pure meritocracy in journalism, you should do it. And it's also pretty simple, no real skills required, just be literate, which I was. And is the show gonna evolve? That's it. Because you've been doing this experiment which I'm about 40 episodes the show gonna evolve? That's it. That's it. You've been doing this experiment,

Starting point is 01:15:25 which I'm about 40 episodes. Well, here's the way that it already has evolved. So I got laid off in April, and I like to fish in bird hunts, so I did a lot of that, and then I was like, I need to do something. So I've been stuck in a studio for all these,

Starting point is 01:15:41 many, many years. I couldn't really go anywhere. And I took seven foreign trips in four months. I just went to all these places where I knew people. I was interested in what was going on. And I just found it amazing. Two things I found amazing. One, the view of America, the vansage you get from a foreign country, almost happening

Starting point is 01:15:57 in your own is completely different. There's also a lot. The whole world is reshuffling in my view after the Ukraine war, February 2022, really did change a lot, particularly with respect to America's place in the world. That's worth covering. And the second thing I learned, once I started putting videos up on X, was that it's international. I mean, I was just shocked by that. I mean, because think about it, I mean, I'm working for a US news channel.

Starting point is 01:16:21 It's one of three US news channels I've worked for. CNN was international, but I was on CNN US. So I'm just used to thinking about America being viewed by Americans having a conversation about this country. I had no experience at all of a big international audience and that platform has that. And so I was amazed by that. And so we're going to continue to cover the rest of the world. I'm going over to

Starting point is 01:16:45 Dubai in February interviewing a incredible head of spending time in the state. It's just so interesting. It's so interesting. It's so interesting. It's a crazy people. And this is not a political point. This is like a human point that bothers me almost more than anything politically, which is the death of curiosity. It's like people are not curious. Like what the hell, I thought the technological revolution would set off like explosions in the brain of every person, like what is that? I wanna learn more and it had exactly the opposite.

Starting point is 01:17:14 It's like low me to sleep with TikTok. Don't tell me more. I don't wanna know. Just double down on what you already know, what you already believe over and over and over again. What is that? I'm like, I know, I'm less certain in my beliefs, I know that I know less than any time of my life and I'm much more interested in many more things than I've ever been.

Starting point is 01:17:31 I think that's normal. And I think there's something like in the water or something that's making people not care, the UFO thing. Like what, whatever you views of that, like, well, what is that? Shut up. And that's normal people. Don't want to hear it. Why? I don't know. Whatever people. Don't want to hear it. Why?

Starting point is 01:17:45 I don't know, whatever. I don't want to preach. I mean, post COVID, we still don't have an accounting of what happened. And Tucker, what do you think about the clip yesterday of Elon? Let's play it for 45 seconds and then get your response.

Starting point is 01:17:57 Tucker Carlson. Apology tour, if you will. That this had been said online. There was all of the criticism. There was advertisers leaving We talked about by you today. I hope it's up you hope don't advertise You don't want them to advertise. No, what do you mean? If somebody's gonna try to blackmail me with advertising blackmail me with money go fuck yourself

Starting point is 01:18:24 But go fuck yourself. But go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob, you're in the audience. Let me ask you then. That's all I feel. All right Tucker, your response to the good for you.

Starting point is 01:18:42 You know, G. F. Y. I mean, I've, you know, interviewed to the good for you, the OG, FY. I mean, I've interviewed people every week for over 30 years, and so I know what it is to interview, I just dropped my parriage, excuse me, and I know, I have a lot of experience interviewing people and I've interviewed you on, you know,

Starting point is 01:18:58 and I don't understand how the New York Times character, I'll see a little guy from the New York Times, it's like, how did you know laugh? Like what? He just told Bob Iger to fuck himself. He's a terrible man. Don't get me started. You and I are in sec.

Starting point is 01:19:10 Andrew R. Circuit is amongst the weakest of moderators in your viewers. What a fussy little douche like that. I agree. You are rough saying it to him. I'm talking like, are you joking? Elon Musk just told Bob Eiger to fuck himself. Like, I'd be texting my response to the book.

Starting point is 01:19:28 I know. No, of course I love it. I love it. I am in the Iger thing. I don't hate Bob Eiger or anything, but I keep hearing from people, mutual people I know who know. Bob Eiger very well.

Starting point is 01:19:42 He's very serious about running for president. It's like, if you really think if you're Bob Agar, you can run for president. You have anything to offer people or they want you to be president like you're pretty out of touch. So I like that, but you know, big picture, I'm really, and I'm not just saying this because it, you know, aligns with my interests

Starting point is 01:20:00 of some kind, I mean it. I'm worried about the pressure that we brought to bear on that platform, on this platform, on X, because it's the only one. The only big one, you know, huge one, international one, tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, like they have to count, they meaning the people who would like to maintain the status quo, kind of have to shut it down. And I am just so hoping that, you know, I can help in any way and that all decent people,

Starting point is 01:20:29 whatever their views, add their voice to a chorus that says, no, you can't shut down the one big free speech platform in the world. You can't do that because then it's just dictatorship. You're not free if you don't have free information and you can't say what you really thought. You were subject to a lot of these advertising attacks they went after Fox and you're showing specifically and it worked. They got people to not advertise on your show.

Starting point is 01:20:53 Yeah. So these advertising boycotts do work, media manners, whatever, you know, whoever's doing them. So I'm curious what you see the business model being for your show and then how you hope to be resistant to it. Are you going to just go straight up subscription and hope that half your audience or 10% of your audience pays and you put half out for free, half out for sub. What do you think?

Starting point is 01:21:13 You've got to have a subscription component to it. Of course, we're selling ads against our content and we'll be doing that on X and on Tucker Carlson.com. We'll be hosting the subscription part of it. Of course, we're selling ads. We'll have network ads too. I mean, there are lots of different things you can do. But in the end, you have to have some subscription component

Starting point is 01:21:39 if you're gonna do it at scale. I mean, we brought our whole staff, almost our whole staff from Fox with us. So we got a bunch of people, we've got bigger ambitions than have been on display so far. And you've got to have more information. And I would just say this about just having been in this one business my whole life, the range of stories is the problem. It's not that the stories are all totally dishonest, some are dishonest, but some are not. They're technically true, but they're taken from such a small pot of

Starting point is 01:22:13 stories that it's like it's crazy. There's all this stuff going on, and it's just not, I mean, I was completely obsessed and remain obsessed with the industrial sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. So that's like, that's a major historical event. You just ended the EU. You just hobbled the economic engine of Europe, which is Germany. Who did that? And there were very few stories on that. That's a very big deal.

Starting point is 01:22:40 And again, back to the curiosity thing, but it's more than that. It's like the people sort of know where not to go. And I just feel like that's, first of all, that sole death. You're not a free man if you're that constrained in your thinking, if you're letting somebody else tell you what you're allowed to think. How can your wife even sleep with you at that point? She, no one can respect you if you live like that, A, B, you can't have a democracy. You can have a democracy, you can't

Starting point is 01:23:05 have a free country under the circumstances. So I don't think I'm overstating it. And so we're going to try to, I hope, be one of many different, similar efforts to just add to the sum total of information and analysis of that information. Well, the end of democracy and sex would be kind of rough, I think. Yeah, good. Yeah. I have a final question, and I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist.

Starting point is 01:23:28 But if one of the presidential candidates called you and said, Tucker, be my VP. And replace Kamala Harris. I mean, I don't think I can do that. She's an historic first. I did Tucker. Would you consider it if Donald Trump gave you that call? Well, of course I would consider it.

Starting point is 01:23:46 I mean, you have no idea how open-minded I am. I'm gonna consider anything, actually. But I mean, the truth is, I kind of don't respect people who do stuff like that. I really believe I've got a lot of theories which I will not inflict on you, but which I do inflict on my own four children. And my main theory of life is that you should do what you are designed to do.

Starting point is 01:24:08 I don't believe this whole you can be whatever you want to be thing. I think it's absurd lie. I think we're made for certain things. We have certain aptitudes. They're inborn. We can hone them and we need to, through practice, repetition. But I think it's a sign of hubris, which is always the death of particularly of men, hubris, thinking you have more power than you do.

Starting point is 01:24:30 When midlife, you're like, well, actually, what I really want to do is direct. It's like, you just won best actress, honey. Go back to acting. And I've never been involved in politics. I've never, I haven't even voted in all elections. I'm serious. So like the idea that I'm going to at 54, like run for national office, I as a little, you know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:24:51 Like I don't take myself quite that seriously. I mean, I can't imagine doing something like that. I'm asking this question is that if we're, at least the Republicans will now prove that we've lived in a 12 year era of a non-traditional candidate. That was essentially a media personality that was able to then curate the plurality of support, right? And there's going to be something that comes after him. And so I'm just trying to get a sense of if it's not you, it's probably to be very honest, somebody like you, right? And what I'm just talking to

Starting point is 01:25:23 us about after just a second. I completely agree with you and I love your characterization of Trump as someone who's from a media background because that's closer to the, I'm not diminishing. I'm from media backgrounds. I'm not attacking him. But that's a lot closer to the truth than most characterizations, Casino Magdett, developer, is a media guy. He had lots of businesses.

Starting point is 01:25:44 But he was a media guy. Yeah, he had lots of businesses, but he was a media guy. He had the top show in NBC. And so I think you're absolutely right. My concern is that, and I have pure contempt for the professional political class. I've written a book about it. I've expressed it daily for a number of years now. And that's real.

Starting point is 01:26:00 However, I think that they're, you know, these are complex systems, and it's better to have someone who understands the systems in an ideal world administer the systems because he's more effective at doing so. And I also think that once you decide that like, hey, let's just go crazy, and you couple that with true social disorder,

Starting point is 01:26:23 like you get to a place where you can't buy anything at CVS because it's chained up because shoplifting has been legalized as it has been in California. What's your going to get as fascism? Because people can't live in that, and they can't live with chaos. Like that's the one thing they can't deal with, and I've covered a couple of wars, and that was my main conclusion. The main problem with wars, not that people get killed, it's that people have to live with total uncertainty and craziness

Starting point is 01:26:47 and that's incompatible with what people want. Like that's the worst thing. You know, we're all gonna die. Dying is not the worst thing. The worst thing is living in chaos and we're starting to live in chaos. And so the return to order is what scares me. I think it'd be very easy.

Starting point is 01:27:02 And I do think Gavin Newsom is a fascist. I think he's the kind of person who would have no problem, no hesitation about using the DOJ to imprison his political opponents. Now Biden is imprisoning his political opponents, but at least they're lying about it. Gavin Newsom is the kind of person who'd be like, well, yeah, you're a threat to the general order and you're going to jail.

Starting point is 01:27:20 And I think because we're in a moment of chaos right now, people kind of want that, actually. I think one of the purposes of degrading and confusing our society is to make way for authoritarianism, even more than we have now. So that kind of freaks me out, actually. I personally, what I would really like, is a kind of colorless, you know, boring, non-charismatic, like Gerald Ford, Mike Pence, without their views, both of those men were bad men, in my opinion. But someone like that who could govern without making it about himself and restore the country

Starting point is 01:27:58 to a sense of rules-based order, that's what I really want, and I'm probably going to be denied that. Tucker, I feel like one of the other consequences of the way things have gone is that the solution has always been to throw more money at the problem and we've got this kind of out-of-control fiscal condition. What's your point of view on the fiscal condition of the US as a priority of the federal government that it is as a priority. And, you know, do we need to shrink government, shrink overall discretionary spending? Do we need to cut these entitlements?

Starting point is 01:28:30 Do we need to do it all? And how do we get there given that everyone gets elected? By telling people, I'm gonna give you more stuff. And then this just kind of cascades for decades until eventually bad shit happens. Well, who's gonna buy our debt? I mean, that's like, it's scary, it's so scary. This is, of course, the problem with democracy.

Starting point is 01:28:51 And I think since, from the Roman Republic until 1776, how many democracies were there? Exactly. Exactly. Let me do the math on that. Approximately zero in that range. And this was the critique, of course, in Europe, of democracy at the time, is not that it gave too much freedom to the average person, but that it would result in tyranny.

Starting point is 01:29:14 And when the majority discovered it could steal the goods of whomever it wanted, legally, legally, you would wind up with dictatorship. I mean, this is like a very well-tried path, but I mean, but I hope it doesn't get to that. I'm not making argument against democracy. I'm just saying it's a little bit harder to perpetuate than we thought that it was. And this is kind of the fear that people have had

Starting point is 01:29:37 for hundreds of years. The fiscal condition is the manifestation of that structural problem. Yes, yes, that's exactly's exactly, that's exactly right. Let's end on this Elon clip from yesterday, just about virtue, like to get your reaction to this Tucker. Tesla has done more to help the environment

Starting point is 01:29:54 than all other companies combined. We're fair to say that, therefore, as a leader of the company, I've done more for the environment than any single human on Earth. How do you feel about that? No, I'm asking you personally how you feel about that because we're talking about power and influence and I'm saying what I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it.

Starting point is 01:30:21 What I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil Fuck them. You're thoughts on verse your signal versus round it was like it was like It was like the hand of God massaging my central nervous system like every erosion is zone That I could release i don't know where that's like that i could really all-time-a-lice i'm sorry no i just i so viannally agree and i don't even like electric cars i don't think they have the environment i didn't agree with that i just love his point which is the point

Starting point is 01:30:59 which is what actually matters is what you do it's not what you think. What matters is helping other people. And I also think that the fact that Andrew Rossorkin has a television job shows this is not a meritocracy. I don't know how it's about that. But his response, his response to that was like, he didn't even, he can't even, like I'll just kind of say this is like so inside baseball,

Starting point is 01:31:21 but it's literally what I do for a liver, have done all my life. Yes, that's what we do, Tucker. You and I do feel people. The key to interviewing people. Yes, is to listen to them. Larry King, I used to fill in for Larry King at CNN. He was number one, nine PM, all this stuff.

Starting point is 01:31:33 The first time I filled in for Larry King, there was no research. On the guest said, two guests, no research. And I said the producer. Larry was like in Cabo with wife number seven. And I said, where's the research? Oh, Larry doesn't do research. So I do the show when fine. And I called him after I was like, said, where's the research? Oh Larry doesn't do research. So I do the show when fine and I called him after I said, dude, you do no research? He goes, and he was number one, most dominant figure in cable news by far. And he goes, no,

Starting point is 01:31:54 I just listen. And someone says something weird. I pause and I said, wait, wait a second, wait a second. You killed someone in 1962. Why'd you kill? You followed that. You're present in the interview. Yes. And then you follow up based on what this gets said. No, Jason's interrupting you right now. Sorry, go ahead. No, I'm listening to one talker said and reflecting back to what he said, because game realized that it's right.

Starting point is 01:32:18 It's a colloquy. Jake House treating this as validation. Absolutely. There's a whole lot of sorry to this Tucker that you don't need to know about. I can tell it's tantalizing. All it is, it is. Trust me.

Starting point is 01:32:31 Well, let's end here. We have a lot of fans of not only is about 18% crossover between all in and your work Tucker, and they send me images of you out there and about in the world. And I just got this one in my DMs. I don't know what's going on. What's going on here? Is that part of the hamster where you guys?

Starting point is 01:32:51 And this is the bromance is completely. Is yet. That is so you know what? I'm not, that's kind of hunky. I'm just being honest. Yeah. It's a lot going on here. Well, listen, we got to see your body and t shirt feet. The bromance is now complete. Tucker, we'd a lot going on here. Well, listen, we gotta like a senior, fine T-shirt seat.

Starting point is 01:33:05 The pro man is now complete. Tucker, we'd love to have you back on a regular basis. That was so fun. That was super fun. That was great. And I'm sorry for talking too much. You guys spun me up in your frenzy, but I'm really sure.

Starting point is 01:33:17 I understand. I understand why you were number one in media. I was so fun. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Really, really good. Thank you very much, Tucker. Thank you. Thank you. I was so fun. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Really, really good. Thank you very much, Tucker. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's amazing.

Starting point is 01:33:28 Touch the link with a new launch. Everybody go to TuckerFarrowson.com. And when the subs come out on day one, give them a sub. Okay. Sub. He Tucker sub. Didn't come out exactly how I wanted to. You could sub-protucker. Are you going to gonna be a sub-protucker, Sacks? Are you subbing? I'm gonna dump for Tucker. Yeah. Poor Tucker. All right, thanks, Tucker.

Starting point is 01:33:53 See you guys. What'd you guys think? That was fun. That was great. Yeah, let's show you a debrief. I'm a soccer photographer. I'll be honest. Can we get him on group chat?

Starting point is 01:34:01 I mean, can you imagine that he's a good soccer? Yeah, he's a good soccer fun guy Caffer. It's a fun guy. Great guy. He's a great entertainer. And you know what, he's into, I know he's right winged, but he's actually, I think, a first principal thinker who thinks from self. We didn't get into January 6th, we ran out of time,

Starting point is 01:34:15 but, you know, he was, you know, not happy about that. He wasn't happy about election denial. I think he's intellectually rigorous. Wow, Jake Hill. What do you think, Tom? I really liked it. I like talking to people that have opinions that forced me to actually rethink about how I think.

Starting point is 01:34:31 And it was, I think the most impactful thing that he said to me, which touches upon my own life, was just how one feels when you have a little bit too much too early versus grinding slowly and compounding success over many years? I think it does create in moments an element of self-sabotage. I have lived it in my own life, so that totally resonated. This idea that there's just so much abundance that causes people to not really fight over the big issues and then fight over the fringe issues. I do think that there's an element of huge truth in that. It was really, really

Starting point is 01:35:10 good. I think like that, this is probably one of the very few ones that we've done that I would listen to over. Totally. I'd say that was like one of my favorite episodes or probably my favorite episode. Definitely a top five. Just to the listener. I just enjoyed listening the whole fucking conversation. I just wanted to, I just enjoyed listening the whole fucking conversation. I just wanted to, I could hear him talk for hours probably. I know. I didn't want to talk, I didn't have anything to say.

Starting point is 01:35:29 I just wanted to chill and hang out, like listen to. It was great. Yeah, me too. Have you done Tucker show, Chimoff yet? They asked me to do the show in December, which I couldn't do. And at some point in the spring, I will do the show, but then I was like, can you come on, Arshad? And you're like, yeah, you're awesome.

Starting point is 01:35:44 You're doing it right. It's amazing. Yeah, that was amazing. So, Zach was like, can you come on our show? And you're like, yeah. There you go. That's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, that was amazing. Sex, didn't you like go on his show? No, I've been on a Tucker show a couple of times when it was on Fox. And one appearance was about Chase Boudin,

Starting point is 01:35:54 the DA that we got tossed out. And then I went on a couple other times. I think one was about the economy. I was on a show a couple of times for short segments. But anyway, I thought what was interesting about this conversation was that it was much more philosophical than I was expecting. Yes.

Starting point is 01:36:11 We touched it on a few like policy issues, but we spent most of the time talking about his deeper clinical diagnosis of American culture and American discourse. And I would say that one of the things that's maybe unique about his take, and I mean definitely different than mine, is it's much more psychological than, you know.

Starting point is 01:36:33 Metaphysical even. Metaphysical and psychological. I mean, like I don't really ask too many questions about why people believe, what they believe, I just sort of take it as a given, and then discuss whether the right or wrong, whereas he actually sort of psychoanalyzes why people have the views that they have and you know what I mean it's actually kind of interesting.

Starting point is 01:36:54 That whole methodology for whatever it's worth resonates with me I mean I think it's very it's the reason early on I really gravitated to René Girard because I thought it demonstrated a lot of how people behave to me in a language that I could understand. So when Tucker describes problems in this context, to me, it's very powerful just because that is how I kind of frame things. I think humans are driven by psychological incentives. And I think that there is something very worth exploring here, which is these Western cultures get so prosperous that the big

Starting point is 01:37:25 things we don't fight over, so then we fight over the little things, or we have to invent things to fight over. And the virtue signaling, he kind of brings up in his own personal experience, which is, hey, I go to Jackson Hole, I'm getting a costed, you know, in line at the lift, people's wives are upset at me, the husbands are upset at me, the hedge fund, people, these are all people of incredible wealth, incredible privilege, who have extra cycles. And instead of having a debate over the issues in good faith, full contact debate like we do here, they just want to vilify people. And I tried to listen to him and say, Hey, what does he get right here? Now, I obviously think he's wrong about climate

Starting point is 01:37:58 change. I love that was bonkers. But I do think he understands human nature pretty well from doing 30 years of interviews. Yeah. It's definitely worth exploring Jason, this idea that the more successful people get, the more self-loathing there is. And then it manifests in some, you know, really destructive ways. I think especially if you don't have a foundation. Once you get successful enough, there's very little progress. I think a lot of human happiness comes from progress. Progress, exactly. Yeah a progress. Where's the purpose? Well, there's just no higher order bits. You buy the house, that's a huge accomplishment.

Starting point is 01:38:31 But then when you buy your second house or third house, I think the diminishing returns are severe. Yeah, severe. And then these things are just baggage. They're like altatrust. Yeah, and then you're spending all this time dealing with headaches. You know, exactly. What's your progress?

Starting point is 01:38:43 What's your progress? What's the purpose of my, I mean, Sachs, when you bought your 6,000, I mean, you got that. Got just busy reorganizing the US political establishment. So I think he'd make him progress in his own way. Sachs is making progress, yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:58 Yeah. Well, you know, he's, where does he sit on the political spectrum today, Sachs? Because you and he are both, you know, because you're both kind of outcast in the Republican party now, right? Like I would describe Tucker as probably the most influential populist in, you know, on the right.

Starting point is 01:39:18 So there's a populism, well, there's a populism of the left that I guess was Bernie Sanders before he told, you know, maybe like five, eight years ago, whatever. Describe us. Do describe for the audience your perception of populism, you know, on the left and the right and what they share and what they don't share kind of thing. Because this does seem to be the emerging party. I think we would all agree is that people are sick of these extremes and they want something new

Starting point is 01:39:43 and the something new seems to be populism. Well, one way to think about populism is just democracy. Populism is the word that the elite gives to democracy they don't like. So for example, vast majority of the country wants our borders sealed. For some reason, the elites don't want that, so that's the label populism. I think the vast majority of the country regrets the forever wars in the Middle East and don't want that, so that's label populism. I think the vast majority

Starting point is 01:40:05 of the country regrets the forever wars in the Middle East and doesn't want us getting involved in more wars, the sort of hyper interventionism. I think that's like a major part of the platform. And then of course, I think the third big area of re-evaluation was around our free trade policies. They really ended up hollowing out America's industrial capability and exported a lot of manufacturing jobs to try to globalization. So yeah, I think on the right big picture, I would say the populism is a nationalist reaction to the hyper globalization that happened that was encouraged by the elites over the past few decades. And he hit on that.

Starting point is 01:40:46 He said, you know, at some point, are the politicians going to match what the people want? And they call this getting to Denmark, high functioning governments in the Nordics, you know, tend to reflect what the candidates reflect what the people want, right? And we seem to have this kind of broken here. We have one other story, and people have wanted us to comment on when we had our week off.

Starting point is 01:41:10 So I thought we'd get into the opening, I think. I just wanted to point out, I don't mean to make this like a love triangle, Sacks, but Tucker and I did go skiing last year. We tried to keep it, but now that it's out, you know, here it is. I'm sorry about this, but we were actually in the SACO at the same time. So it's gonna come out at some point, you know, here it is. I'm sorry about this, but we were actually in the

Starting point is 01:41:25 sacco at the same time. So it's going to come out at some point. Sax, we might as well talk about it. Look how old and nasty those ski clothes are. Well, yeah. Well, you know what? We're both very well and we don't want, we're a furcher signaling that we don't, we want to recycle. So we bought all of this, uh, a lot of stuff on eBay. I thought that was fuel. How many of them left? I guess that's that. Jake, that's me before I was in Quickface. All right.

Starting point is 01:41:49 Let's do the open eye. Hey, I think if you guys have time, we can we go over this real quick. I don't want to. We can. I just wonder if the story's stale, but I mean, I think one of the things we can do here is just sort of now that the three acts are complete.

Starting point is 01:42:03 We can actually talk about the appleogue just to for people who have no message. I think the epilogue's about to drop, but yeah, well, that's, that's what we'll get at. I think we're still in the second act here. I think this is over by long shot. All right. So let me check this. I'm curious why that is. I'm going to architect and they're going to hand it to you. Act one, Sam's fired act two chaos for a week. We were off. You know, what were all the reasons act three, obviously, just yesterday, Sam's back. I think Ilias out, Microsoft's an observer on the board.

Starting point is 01:42:32 So I guess the epilogue, Trimoff, is what we want to know is what happened. Why did this all happen? Was there a major breakthrough? Was it Sam doing deals with Masayoshi-san or in the Middle East to make AI chips. What if the epilogue does drop? Or if like you're saying, this is the second act and the third act is going to begin, whichever metaphor you want to use, what will it say, Jim? I think we can all agree on what happened, which is that the employees realize that in

Starting point is 01:43:02 the absence of leadership, business leadership, that the enterprise value of that company was going to disintegrate. And what would have been imperiled was an $86 billion valuation secondary. So I think the employees did what was in their best interest and it makes the obvious and logical sense, which is we need to circle the wagons and get the business leadership of this company back into this place so that the value of the enterprise is sustained. They did that.

Starting point is 01:43:37 So I think this valuation is going to hold, I think the secondary is going to happen. So I think like from that perspective, whatever was supposed to happen there happened. So what are the interesting threads that are left over? We don't yet have a full accounting of what precipitated all of the decision making at the board number one. Number two is the person who seemed to be the principal inventor is now no longer on the board and I think based on Sam's blog post could probably no longer be at the company. That seems like an important thing.

Starting point is 01:44:19 And then the third thing which I found out was Brett Taylor who I work with with at Facebook, who I've known for a long time, very sober, reasonable guy, puts out his own, addendum to the blog post that basically says, his chairmanship of this board is purely transitory. What do you take? What's that? Yeah. What do you take from that? My takeaway is, whatever's happening is still TBD. There's enough question marks that look, I told my friends on the board without saying who it was.

Starting point is 01:44:52 Whatever you guys do, the most important thing that you need to do is you need to retain great counsel and make sure that they're and I said this publicly, make sure that there's phenomenal D&O insurance and make sure that there aren't any issues where you could be held personally liable for whatever happens in the future. You're saying of the vow, the corporate vow. Now, that's a generic thing that I think all corporate directors should do.

Starting point is 01:45:17 I think it's even more important here because you have a non-standard governance structure that could change. And it could change because the people involved wanted to change, but it could also could change because the government says, hey, hold on a second, this should never have been like this in the first place. So I'll give you an example of that.

Starting point is 01:45:36 You know, at Facebook, there was a moment where we divested all of our IP to a subsidiary in Ireland and for tax reasons. And there were two signatories to that deal. It was me and Zuck. And six or seven years later, this is long after I left face, but the IRS says, hold on a second, you misvalued these assets. We're owed X billions of dollars in taxes. It was a huge long drawn out thing. So at a minimum, if there's great value created here, there will be consequences with respect to tax and who paid what. And if you have the shielding of a nonprofit

Starting point is 01:46:12 entity, there's theoretically a lot of taxes that could have been paid that not. So all of this to me says, a lot of really open curious threads, which means it's not the epilogue yet. We're probably somewhere at the end of act two. Friedberg, my question to you is there's been speculation that there was an super intelligence, AGI breakthrough possibly, and that's what spooked everybody, and maybe the claim that Sam wasn't forthcoming with the board was that he didn't tell him about it. The second thing was there's been some forechan posts. Again, this is pure speculation. That maybe the AI they're working on could break in some way encryption

Starting point is 01:46:52 and that would have been cost a really chaotic global moment. What are your thoughts on those three potential items or more, or any of those possibilities in your mind, Dave, free bird? No idea. But I can just stop that. Yeah, go ahead, Dave, free, no idea. But I can do that. Yeah, go ahead, Zach.

Starting point is 01:47:08 Good, Zach, you take a step. So I think the best theory on what actually happened here, what precipitated all of this, was broken in a piece by Reuters. And what it said was that there was a letter to the board that was written in the few days before Sam's firing by the board in which there were raising concerns of the development of QSTAR, which was a new breakthrough

Starting point is 01:47:31 at OpenAI that allows these language models to do math. And previously, LLMS just weren't very good at math. It would sort of predict the next word, but that wasn't actually based on mathematical reasoning. QSTAR actually allows the AI to do math that understands mathematical reasoning. Supposedly, the capability is only at a grade school level right now, but it is highly accurate

Starting point is 01:47:53 and it can be scaled up with more computing power. And I don't think it was coincidental that SAM was supposedly in the Middle East seeking to raise billions of dollars to create a new chip company, basically a new specialized chip or ASIC, to perhaps run these types of models. So they were gonna scale up this capability.

Starting point is 01:48:10 And what mathematical reasoning allows you to do is unlock a whole new problem set. So for example, in chemistry, in physics, in computer science, in cryptography. In encryption. And in encryption, all these things, mathematical reasoning underpins all of these disciplines. And so it does represent a major new piece towards AGI.

Starting point is 01:48:35 And so I think the best theory about what happened is that the board, but I'd say specifically Ilya had a panic or moment of panic or concern, you know, freak out or what have concerned, whatever about this. And it combined with probably underlying concerns that the board had about Sam's other activity because he's got his fingers and a lot of eyes here. So it hits two of the three potential reasons, you know, putting aside any personal behavior, it seems like there's no personal behavior here. So it's two of the three potential reasons, putting aside any personal behavior, it seems like there's no personal behavior here. So it's those two, right?

Starting point is 01:49:09 Right, so they fired him, but they apparently didn't really think it through at all. And they didn't really think. These are not, it's not a professional board. That's constructive. Well, I don't know, I think Adam, Adam is very professional, but the other two were considered

Starting point is 01:49:22 fairly as a number of judges. And then the two others who were, you know, from nonprofits or the corporation here. And so what happened is they took this drastic action but didn't explain it. And with each passing day, it became more glaring that they would not explain it. So the pressure sort of built on the company to explain itself and provide a good justification for this. And then meanwhile, I think Sam just ran a textbook counter-coup operation here. I mean, they got hearts.

Starting point is 01:49:51 Mojis. There was that aspect of it, but disguise behind the velvet glove of all these hearts and saying I love you and all the stuff was the Iron Fist. The Iron Fist was they got over 700 of the 770 open AI employees to sign a petition. They were going with Sam and Sam went to Microsoft and shut up shop. So the threat to the board was, I'm going to take the whole company with me and set up shop over a Microsoft. And that was sort of the compelling threat, basically all the employees threatened to quit and go with Sam. And so the board was under immense pressure. And then at the same time, you got the sense that

Starting point is 01:50:29 Ilya was under a lot of personal pressure from his friends, from people he knew at the company. It's not probably irrelevant that there's about to be a huge cashout. There's about to be a big secondary at a $86 billion valuation. So all these early employees were about to make a lot of money. In any event, for all of these reasons, I think, I don't think I'll use motivated by money. I think he's motivated by wanting to keep open AI intact.

Starting point is 01:50:53 I think that he must have had a moment where he realized, wait a second, what we've done here in throwing out Sam is destroying the company. And then he recanted, he basically apologized and signed that petition. And at that moment, it just became a fake accompli that Sam was gonna get his job back. And so that's basically what happened.

Starting point is 01:51:11 Now, in terms of the epilogue, where I disagree slightly with Trimoth is that although they still have to form this board, they're gonna form a nine person board and they only have three members so far. I think the conclusion here is it's sort of a foregone conclusion, which is the board can never fire Sam again. I mean, they're not going to go through that again. Therefore, he has total control. It's a lot. It's

Starting point is 01:51:36 a lot. So I think that Sam has won and he's going to consolidate his control over the company. By the way, I thought he already had control. I thought that. Yeah, you all outlined that in the previous episode. And we all thought that he had control. Apparently he did not. Do you think he makes it? I think he will have it now. I think he will have it now. I think he will have it now.

Starting point is 01:51:52 I think he will have it now. And make it a for profit. Do you think he just makes it a for profit and then says, hey, we'll give X amount of the equity or whatever to this nonprofit, but we're just gonna flip this thing and separate it out and clean up the original sin. I think apparently there's like tax problems with doing that. But I think that what happens is, look, they already have this for-profit LLC entity,

Starting point is 01:52:09 which is where all the investors have basically put their money into and they've gotten shares or membership interests or some sort of profit interest. Symphatic shares, whatever they say. Symphatic shares, phantom shares. And then the vast majority of that is owned by this foundation, the nonprofit foundation, that I always always understand is controlled, but apparently it wasn't. I think it now will be. I think that I just think that what's going to happen in the next few months is that Sam O'Consoleady is controlled because he's proven that he has a total loyalty of the

Starting point is 01:52:37 troops and they're behind him and there's no choice. So why won't he get everything he wants? Yeah, all of the smoke, I think, leads to the fire that you point out, which is there was some great advance. There was some deals going on and those things. It matches what the board said. We didn't feel like we was being forthcoming with us and it could be on two issues like that. It just totally makes sense. It locks the puzzle pieces in place.

Starting point is 01:53:03 Dave, let's assume that they have now not only done language models predicting the next word and understanding that, but there is some reasoning going on here and they understand math and it understands how to do the next math problem. I don't know if we put that under reinforcement learning. It's obviously very different than language models. Explain what you think if that is what's happening here with the Q project, what that could mean on a scientific basis. I don't know enough. I'm sorry.

Starting point is 01:53:31 I got to ask. I mean, this is why we love you because you're honest when you don't know. Chimata ending here as we wrap in terms of watching this whole bruhaha. I think it's probably not the end. Yeah. Yeah. More drama. I think there probably will not the end. Yeah. Yeah. More drama. I think there probably will be more drama.

Starting point is 01:53:48 Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of drama. Did you see the article this morning where they started saying all the houses that Sam bought? He bought all these houses. And so I think there's a lot of investigators digging around now trying to figure out all the backstory because the board wasn't so forthcoming with what happened and why they made this decision. There's a lot of people digging around trying to figure out more about Sam than may have been looked into in the past. So this will reveal

Starting point is 01:54:13 all sorts of new threads that'll start to become part of the narrative. It's unfortunate. I think that the technology, the progress is what really matters here, not all the kind of personal people stuff, it's weird. I also, the other comment I'll make, I thought one of the biggest takeaways for me on the whole drama last week was that the employees basically got their way. Employees got together, voted and said, this is what we want and the board did what they wanted.

Starting point is 01:54:41 And it really, I think sets another precedent, much like, I think Elon said a really big precedent to Silicon Valley when he came in and slashed heads at Twitter. The precedent that triggered a lot of other executives to start to think, well, maybe that's possible. And I should think about doing, you know, more cost savings and so on. This is another interesting precedent where an entire employee base gets together and says, we want X and the board acquiesced and said, here you go, you can have X. Does that mean that other startups and other companies

Starting point is 01:55:11 are gonna start to see employee groups band together, saying we want X in a more vocal public way? Possibly. Well, I mean, Fribert, this is not a new tactic. Right. But look, if the employees are going to sign a petition on mass and you get over 90% of them supporting something and then you also threaten to all set up shop somewhere else, I mean, boards usually respond to that pressure.

Starting point is 01:55:34 Yeah, but look, I think that it's very clear that Sam has the support of the troops. I'm not questioning that, but I think it would be a mistake to just see this as some sort of spontaneous groundswell. I think there was clearly like some organization to it. Like I said, I think he ran a textbook operation there. Yeah. And wasn't it Paul Graham who said something like if Sam were dropped in an island of cannibals, like kind of a Lord of the Fly situation, he'd be the one to come out on top.

Starting point is 01:56:01 He's like really, he's in his element. Don't just assume, Look, this is all covered up by hearts and I love you. I mean, I've never read a corporate announcement with the word love and more times. This was not about love and hearts. All that, you know, this is there's some. He's a wartime list corporate in fighting here. Yeah. And he's on top. But look, the board was totally incompetent. I mean, listen, if a board is going to take a drastic action of firing the founder CEO when everything is going great, I mean, because everything's been going great at open AI, it's incumbent on them to explain their actions.

Starting point is 01:56:37 And there needs to be why didn't they do that? Even as a seemer, I'm saying it's a competition. I'm saying it was totally incompetent. Yeah. They should have dropped it. Yeah. Well, no, what I'm saying is, either there's a smoking gun or there's not. I don't think you should take an action like this ever unless there's a smoking gun.

Starting point is 01:56:57 And if there is a smoking gun, you need to communicate that. Right. And I think with each passing day that they didn't communicate it, people came to the conclusion there is no smoking gun. And so I guess there is no smoking gun. And they were overly hasty about taking this action. Yeah, this could have been a very simple discussion. Hey, Sam, can we work on you telling us in advance when you're going and doing deal making so we can be an alignment on it? Like, she might, there was something that could have been done that wasn't firing him.

Starting point is 01:57:27 And then I suppose, what? Yeah, I mean, like, you could, you could put somebody on a pip, you could do all kinds of things. So taking the step of, yeah, letting somebody go in that way with that orchestration. Again, I just, I just think that this stuff is too juicy and too interesting for the details in our commot.

Starting point is 01:57:49 Oh, it will come out. Yeah, the fact that it hasn't come out yet is crazy. I would have suspect they would have come out in the first 72 hours. So you think there is maybe not a smoking gun, but there's something. No, no, no, I think it's what we said, which is that the economically rational decision for all the employees and for Sam and Greg was to do what they did because it allowed them to get an $86 billion valuation and a big secondary done. That makes complete rational sense.

Starting point is 01:58:15 That is the rational decision that should have happened. That did. It doesn't stop whatever underlying chaos was happening that caused this decision to exist in the first place to not come out. I just think that the incentives for that decision to come out now, for example, from the two departing board members is quite high. How do you get this information from the incoming board members? How do they not say anything? All the new six people will have that join the board will have to get read into this thing, right? So you're just multiplying the number of people that knows whatever it is and

Starting point is 01:58:54 It's either going to be David to your point path A which is the board didn't know what they're doing in the acted hastily or You know the cell preservation of here's what we knew But it is just gonna to come out and leak after leak after leak. And then to your point, the pulling the sweater of all of the other deals that may have been happening on the side or whatever, all of this stuff now comes out because it's just too salacious for too many people. The numbers are too big. Everything just looks too juicy. Now you have this like hidden technology that could theoretically ruin the world. Everybody will be leaking to everybody.

Starting point is 01:59:29 And that's the only guarantee here. Which is why I really think that you have to commend the leadership team for trying to become very militaristic about all of this. Everybody had the same tweets. They said the same things, they use the same heart emojis. I mean, it was extremely well managed. It was mantras. It's amazing what a secondary will do to the troops. And to be honest, there's

Starting point is 01:59:54 alignment of the stock price. Well, as a mantra, the mantra was that opening eye is nothing without its employees or something like that. It's team. Without team or something. And that was it. That was basically something that on the surface appeared to be a positive affirmation of camaraderie. But like I said, iron fist beneath the velvet glove, it's a threat. It's a threat. We can set up shop at Microsoft. It's also the formula in an Excel spreadsheet that says they are nothing without the team.

Starting point is 02:00:22 The enterprise value equals zero. The company is a zero without us, and we can go to shop somewhere else. So it was perfect. Velvet glove iron fist type stuff. Yeah, well done, Sam. Well, Sam will be on the pod in the coming weeks, I think. I've been texting with him.

Starting point is 02:00:38 I think if Sam, I think what Elon said yesterday was also really interesting, which is he described Ilya as an extremely moral person who thinks about these things subtly. And so again, and I've known Adam for a long time, I think Adam is tremendous. He is from Kora, Adam Daniela. Yeah, he was a CTO at Facebook.

Starting point is 02:00:59 We worked together in the trenches in war for years. He is just the best of the best. Totally. He's very smart, very knowledgeable. This is not an irrational emotional person. My guess is that they had good reasons to want to act based on the Ilya's philosophy around AI safety. You may not agree with that philosophy, but their mistake was, if you're gonna do something like that,

Starting point is 02:01:31 you have to be able to defend it, you have to be able to communicate it. And I mean, if your concern here was around AI safety, write a manifesto, you know, explain the values that you're invoking and support it. That's right. I think that's the takeaway for all of us, for all of us on boards that at some point have to make these decisions because we're all faced with them and we've made them.

Starting point is 02:01:54 The lesson that I learned is we're at a point where it is so important that you give employees the transparency to reunderwrite why they should stay. So when you make a decision like this in any company going forward, my reaction will be open the kimono and lay out the case. Bear. So if you have to make a CEO transition, this is exactly why we did it. This was the precipitating events that caused it.

Starting point is 02:02:18 Here's the evidence and here's what we're gonna do about it. And I think that that's probably a good takeaway for all boards to learn, which is that level of transparency is going to be needed in the future so that folks don't fill in the blanks with their own conspiracy theories. Also, there were apparently two companies or two organizations running in parallel here to build on your points, Tremont, which is Ilya and the nonprofit.

Starting point is 02:02:41 This might have been the right decision for that organization. But the right decision for the employees who are encended by this secondary that was about to be shipping the employees, apparently billions of dollars, that for-profit company, this would be the wrong decision. The for-profit company should go fast and it should be releasing where it is.

Starting point is 02:03:00 This is where it is. And Jason, like the, from what was reported, there's like this obligation and it's the I from what was reported there's like this obligation and it's hard to understand what it means of the board to determine when AGI is reached and then as a result essentially hit the kill switch on the commercial business. And if I were a board member dealing with that I would want a gazillion trillion dollars of insurance to cover me. And the reason is that when that's litigated, not if, when that's litigated,

Starting point is 02:03:32 it is that board that will be at the center of dealing with that financial responsibility and liability. This is the other masterstroke, I think of what Sam did. He's not even on the board, so that liability is no longer his. So he's got complete control of the business and the actual, no, the responsibility and the actual fiscal responsibility. He doesn't have to bear. Good. Well, can I speak to the kill switch for a second? So I think it's a really interesting point. So by the way, Jason, there is a for profiting here. The for profiting is this new

Starting point is 02:04:08 LLC that was created. Correct. The nonprofit entity is above it at the governance layer and it kind of owns the LLC. Right. So again, investors and employees get compensated out of the LLC. And then this nonprofit foundation was supposed to exercise a really complicated org chart. There you go. Yeah. Whenever an org chart has more than like two arrows, it's crazy. You're fucked. How many arrows? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight arrows.

Starting point is 02:04:33 That's six to many. But my point is that this complexity was justified by this idea of the kill switch, that if the AI gets out of control, the AI gets out of control, we're gonna have this board of super wise people who are not motivated by a profit incentive, right? Because we can't trust the profit and motive, right?

Starting point is 02:04:54 And so we're gonna have this board of wise elders who are going to make this super intelligent decision. And if this whole episode shows anything, it shows this structure completely failed. I mean, the board ended up acting in a completely incompetent way. Either they had good cause to do what they did and didn't explain it, which was incompetent, or they had no cause at all, which was incompetent. Either way, you cannot say that this board acted with a high degree of competence. No matter how competent any of the individuals are,

Starting point is 02:05:24 I'm just saying that as a board dynamic, it completely failed. So they did not invent some higher form of governance as they originally claimed was a- The Frank structure. It's a Frank structure. So it didn't work. And I think this all, I mean,

Starting point is 02:05:38 it's a, I think important lesson in human motivations, which is just because you take out the profit motive, does not mean that human beings all of a sudden become noble. They just pursue other agendas, basically political agendas or whatever. So this idea that we're going to solve the AGI problem or alignment issue by creating non-profit structures, I think that this episode proves that's not going to work. Like look elsewhere. And you and I talked about this on Twitter spaces and ex-bases, which was, you know, people give VCs and, you know, investors a hard time about, you know, I don't

Starting point is 02:06:18 know, their existence and how they operate in the world. Okay, fair enough, I'm sure there's valid criticisms. But the share price and employees participating and the share price going up and secondary is occurring on a regular basis is the most perfect structure that has been created by humans to date for running an organization. I think we would all agree. And it's super imperfect and there's weird things that happen. But if you want everybody to grow in the right direction, giving them some shares and then everybody watching the share price go up into the right It's pretty phenomenal this board did not have one VC on it. It was not and all the VCs in the company were they were the biggest

Starting point is 02:06:53 You know, they were the most aggressive tweeters Saying you know WTF like what are you doing because they could see their investment going up and smoke? They had a lot of money with the share price, but no controls. So as much as you don't like the profit motive, it does create alignment, and that makes people predictable, and that's a good thing.

Starting point is 02:07:13 And like Adam Smith said in the 1700s, the reason we contrast that the butcher and the baker will serve us our dinner is because they're gonna make a profit. They're aligned with us. And, you know, we don't look to charity. We look to their self-interest. And like you said, for all the shit that VCs take, that if you properly align people, it can create, I think, it creates a great enterprise. It creates a potential for a great enterprise for great outcomes. Great outcomes, absolutely. All right, this has been another extraordinary all-in episode, probably top five.

Starting point is 02:07:50 Thanks so much for Tucker Clawson for coming on the program. And for the Sultan of Science, David Friedberg, the Rainman, yeah, definitely, David Sax. And the Dictator himself, which is my only hope to you. I'm the world's greatest moderator, and we'll see you next time. Crazy We should all just get a room and just have one big huge or two because they're all It's like this like sexual tension, But we just need to release that out

Starting point is 02:08:48 What your, that be, what your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, I'm going on with it.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E155: In conversation with Tucker Carlson, plus OpenAI chaos explained

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